meeting the teachers
DESCRIPTION
In June 2013, Moving Education hosted a workshop with four Irish teachers. Using structured dialogue, active participation Moving Education facilitated a conversation that helped inform the competition brief.TRANSCRIPT
To ensure that the competition brief was focused on the real needs of teachers and students, moving education went back to school…
We spent time observing a range of different behaviours happening in a variety of learning spaces. We saw…
Students doing
manual work
sitting down
Students kneeling on the floor to get level with their work
Students swinging around to speak to their piers
Teachers are resource hungry and time poor
Classrooms are often cramped spaces
Bags stored on chairs, under feet, on desks
Cables stretched between a work bench and a desk
A student with severe dyslexia moving throughout the class
A variety of different classroom types (old, new, oblong, square)
Students standing with more active tasks
Class periods are extremely short
Then moving education spent time listening to teachers and finding out more about their needs
We heard that…
My challenge
is to try and
reclaim floor
space
Technology is already having an impact on the need for storage
Teachers lack exposure. They like to share new ways of doing things.
Chewing Gum makes a difference to students concentration
I use my car as a storage space between classes
I promote small exercises in the class to help students energy levels
Junior cycle and Senior cycle students have very different needs
Flipping classroom is impeded by the current furniture
Locker areas can be a place where bullying happens. . .
It’s not a question of if epads are introduced it’s when...
I’m interested in improving social spaces for senior students...
Information on good furniture is scarce in Ireland
Class periods are too short to reconfigure furniture layout
These visits helped moving education learn more about four research themes
Environment PedagogyMedia Community
To deep dive even further into these areas, moving education invited four of the teachers we’d met to a workshop
Becky
Glenda
Noel
Sue
We structured a day of talking and doing. It went like this…
Phase 1Collect
Using post-it notes, we shared
what we had learned from our
visits with the teachers…
…and invited them to challenge our understanding or add to what moving education had already learned
Phase 2Curate
Teachers were then invited
to arrange the post-it notes
according to the four themes
Phase 3Create
Teachers were given an exercise that challenged them to come up with new ideas around movement
This kind of exercise
helped make the conversation more tangible
Capture
The four teachers were then given an opportunity to reflect as a group and capture what they had learned
moving education learned that…
Collaborating with teachers made it possible for moving education to develop a brief that focused on real needs.
moving education learned that…
We would like to thank Becky, Glenda, Noel and Sue for helping moving education go back to school.
Becky
Glenda
Noel
Sue