CF Classroom

When the new school library was built at Tigard High School, the old library was transformed into four classrooms that are now dedicated to the Business Department. Due to fire safety issues, three of the classrooms are interconnect with each of these three classes having a door connecting to the hallway and a door connecting to another business classroom. This makes it easy for the teachers in the Business Department communicate during the day if they have questions or need help with something. The classrooms are located in the same hallway as the main office. This is not only convenient access to the office for the teachers, but also cuts down on noise in the hallway outside of the classroom.

Three of the four classrooms are shared classrooms and do not have a teacher desk in the classroom. There is a dedicated teacher station in each of these classrooms that has a small desk with a chair and a computer. Because the classrooms are shared, there is a Business Department office where four of the teachers have their desks. This actually promotes a very good relationship between the Business teachers as they see each other many times throughout the day, and have a common place to meet before and after classes.

The classroom where I will be teaching Business Marketing is on the West end of the block of classrooms.

It has a short hallway that leads to the entrance door with student lockers on both sides of the hall. There is a entrance corridor once you enter the classroom with storage cabinets on the right side of the corridor. Once you enter the main classroom there are computer banks placed on the outer walls of the classroom. In the middle of the classroom there are thirty-five individual desks lined up in five rows of seven. All the desks face toward the wall opposite the main entrance door. There is a white board located on the West wall of the classroom, with a SMARTboard mounted on the South wall and a large bulletin board mounted on the East wall. The teacher’s station, two printers, and a television with a dvd player are all located in the South section of the classroom around the SMARTboard. Finally, there are two garbage cans in the classroom: one at the end of the entrance corridor and one by the printers. The ceiling of the class is vaulted, since it was the old library, and has three skylights.

Because of the vaulted ceilings and the natural light from the skylights makes the cramped room seems very large and open, even with so many desks and computers in the room. There are usually marketing posters, banners, or other examples of student work displayed on the bulletin board, while the teachers use the whiteboard to write up class objectives or important school information. The desks are close together so when the students do work in groups it is easy for them to move into their groups.

This room is very conducive to an elective, business marketing class. The light and open atmosphere give it a contemporary feel that is not typical of most classrooms. This fits with the somewhat laid-back attitude of the subject matter; although the students do a lot of work in Business Marketing, it is an elective class where the students do many in-class projects that revolve around a fictitious professional sports team. The class helps create the feel of a marketing department as it allows movement and has many of the necessary creative materials already in the classroom.

Overall I think this classroom structure has a positive impact on the students. Not only are all materials needed for lessons already in the room (including enough computers for each student to have their own), but there is a SMARTboard which will be fun to utilize for lessons. There are, however, two issues that I think will be challenging when it comes to classroom management. The first issue has to do with students’ misuse of the computers. Most of the computers screens face the classroom so it is easy to monitor what the students are working on while they are connected to the internet, but there is a row seven computers that are closest to the desks where the screens face toward the wall so the teacher cannot see what the student is doing unless she walks between the rows of the computers. I have observed many students get on their Facebook page or youtube.com while using these computers; students get an automatic, one-hour detention when they access either of these sites on the computer during class time. To combat this, I am going to make the students fill up all computers against the walls before a computer in the freestanding row can be used. If there is a computer on the wall that is open, I will make the student move to that computer so I can see what he or she is doing while on the internet.

The second classroom management issue has to do with how close the desks are placed together. The Business Marketing class I will be teaching is large with thirty-three students. Because of the size of the class and the close proximity of the seating, I will have to be very aware of small, disruptive talking that can occur. Instead of trying to talk over these small side conversations, I will need to pause and wait for the students to quiet down. I have observed a couple of instances when the teacher did not pause to wait for quiet, the students merely started talking louder, which generally led to even more students starting up their own discussions. In a large classroom it is always important to try to control unnecessary conversations, but it will be even more important in a very crowded, very large elective marketing class.