I worked to do that too. I tried to spend a little time at the end of the day or week, or at the end of a project or major role play, to reflect on how to better teach, organize, and manage my classroom.
I think this can be applied to teaching practice/lesson planning as well. There are many moments where it seems the best way to learn is to take a risk and fail.
What messages were my bulletin boards sending? Whose history or point of view was I presenting?
I highlight this because I want to underline the reality that, as a fellow, we do not always have control over the content of what is in our room. There are occasions where implicitly or explicitly we are told that this is not our room, but someone else's that we are simply occupying/borrowing.
Permission is necessary in order to radically change the relationship of desk to desk, student to student, student to teacher. Permission is needed to change the nature of how we learn together in an educational community.
The notion of permission is even more complex as the pandemic holds the protocol and rule-setting now.
What does it suggest about power?
At Lawrenceville, the Harkness table in most Humanities class rooms eliminates the notion of a "head of table" which makes a considerable difference in flow/progression of conversations. I find that few students after the first week look towards me to address their questions; instead, the students address them around the table!
What I'm up to is this: I'm trying to provide students with an op-portunity to think about ordinary things in their lives, like classroom furniture arrangements, and push them to find connections between how they sit in a classroom and how they learn to view themselves in a larger political world. I want them to think about what other than math or English is being taught in a classroom divided into rows. What "hidden lessons" are being imparted about power, learning, and equali-ty, what lessons do students learn about who they are from the material shaping of their space?
I think this is a crucial note; however, I think the central focus of this is warped deeply by the reality of social distancing. I wonder how we may be able to find "hidden lessons" within the (no pun intended) small wiggle room we have physically/spatially in the classroom as of now.