Classroom Design: Does it Affect Our Students?

An empty classroom with ten
 chairs and desks, with blue tops,
 facing a whiteboard.

Many teachers see no issue with the way that their classroom is organized if it is pleasant to the eyes. While the aesthetics of a classroom is of great importance, the way it is organized is even more so. Oftentimes, when teachers care only about aesthetic issues, this can lead to seating arrangements that negatively impact their students' attention or their teaching style. If a teacher has more of a focus on lecture-based education, then the row seating should work fine, correct? Well, yes and no. Row seating makes it easy for the teacher to maneuver between students and keep an eye on them. However, it also causes students in the back of the room to pay less attention and have less access to the PowerPoint or visual aid used by the teacher. Think of it like attending a play, the further back you are from the stage the less you are able to make out, part in due to the space and part in due to the people sitting in front of you. Table groupings can be great for teachers who focus on group activities. However, whenever the teacher turns away from the wrong group, there is a high chance for misbehaving to occur. Circular or Semicircular seating can be great for teachers who focus on the use of class discussions. Yet, they can also have some issues with access to visual aid due to the space between the students and the projector. However, this space tends to not be as big of an issue as the issues of space and people placement in row seating. When working with Deaf students, the use of semi-circle seating is imperative. This is due to the fact that ASL is a visual language and students should have clear and easy access to seeing both the teacher and the other students.

I believe that all seating arrangements have positive and negative effects. This means that a teacher should focus on organizing their seating arrangements in ways that will increase productivity regarding their focus on teaching. I am also aware that some teachers may not be able to change the seating arrangement of their room, due to room sharing or other similar reasons. This means that a teacher may have to do their best with what they were given. In cases such as this, it is the teacher's job to make the lesson as engaging as possible. If forced to use a seating arrangement that may not fully fit with their lesson, teachers must do their best to make the lesson a positive learning experience and account for time that may occur if students must switch seats.

FM Systems: How Can They Help In Your Classroom?

Many Deaf and Hard of Hearing students now use hearing assistive technology such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. However, while these assist in hearing, this does not mean that your student will always be able to hear or listen to you. Students with Hearing Assistive Technology (HATs) often struggle to hear teachers, parents, or others in noisy rooms. This is how FM Systems can help. FM Systems acts as a speaker that, tends to, directly link to your students' HAT to deliver your voice to them as if you were right 

A white cochlear implant laying
on its side on a white background

beside them, even if you are across the classroom. FM Systems assist in diminishing listening fatigue by doing this, as your student no longer has to strain to attempt to focus on your voice. While many FM Systems typically connect directly to your students' HAT, some systems can be placed in the ceiling at certain intervals to create better sound quality for all students in the classroom. This type of system can not only assist students with HATs but also students without HATs to be able to better hear you throughout your lesson. Not only this, but FM Systems can help keep a teacher from straining their voice to talk over any background noises that occur in the classroom. While FM Systems can be a huge help to your students, there are a few teacher errors that can occur with them if not careful. Some teachers may forget to switch off the microphone when the students are doing individual work, causing the student to hear any conversations the teacher may have during this time. There have also been a few horror stories of teachers forgetting to switch off the microphone when they go to the restroom, allowing the students to hear everything done there. Therefore, FM Systems can be highly effective if used carefully and purposefully.

I believe that FM Systems are a good source to help students with HATs not become burnt out on listening fatigue, especially during a long school day. They can also help everyone in a classroom, the teacher, students with HATs, or students without HATs. I have little experience with FM System use in grade school but have had quite a few professors who implemented them into their lectures. Because they did this, everyone in the classroom could hear the professor without straining to focus on listening or second guessing if they heard correctly. Due to this experience, I can first-handedly state that FM Systems are a wonderful addition to any classroom and have many benefits.

Learning Styles: a Tall Tale or Lined With Truth?

An empty classroom with fifteen wooden
  desks and chairs facing a blackboard
 and a turned-off smart-board.

 Many teachers start out their school year by asking students what way they learn best. This is a question that has become so popular that many of us don't dare question its validity. However, is this information that has seemingly become common knowledge true? Learning styles is a teaching theory used by millions of individuals in the education system each year. It derives from the idea that everyone learns best in different ways that can be allocated to one of four groups: Visual, Auditory, Reading & Writing, or Kinesthetic. While it is true that we all often have a preference for the way we learn, this doesn't necessarily mean that our learning is impacted by only using said preference, as learning styles suggest. In fact, there is no evidence proving that catering to one specific learning style has actually caused any rise in learning. Instead, what has caused a ripple in the learning styles theory is that instead of tailoring lessons towards one form of learning, evidence proves that the more ways we receive information, the more likely we are to remember it. So instead of focusing on only one way to learn, we should provide students with multiple ways to gain this information. This does not have to be complicated and can be as simple as having a lecture with visualizes, a video, a primary source/textbook, and the opportunity to create whatever they are learning about with clay. Therefore, instead of trying to cater to only one or two ways of learning, we should attempt to cater to them all when able.  

I grew up in a school system where learning styles were always something asked at the first of the year and pushed towards being implemented. While it seemed to work great, I missed out on vital information from the forms of learning styles hardly implemented, such as Kinesthetic. There were also subjects that, even when catered to my preferred learning styles, Visual and Auditorial, I didn't retain as much of the info as I should have. This shows that even when you attempt to tailor and cater to specfic learning styles, your students may not gain all of the info they need to gain. Not only this, but my experiences don't take into account the fact that many students who are Deaf, Deafblind, or Hard of Hearing are not able to utilize one or more of these supposed learning styles. Therefore, if they are not able to utilize these ways to learn, in my opinion, it is even more imperative that we provide our lessons in multiple facets for these students to properly learn these lessons. In the end, we all do have preferences for how learn, but we learn best when we are provided the necessary information in many different ways and in the case of Deaf, Deafblind, and Hard of Hearing students it is imperative we do this.