Episode 6 – Flexible Seating

Hello! This is Danah Hashem, and thanks for joining me for today’s episode of Prose and Context. In this episode, I’d like to spend some time talking about flexible seating: what it is, how I’ve seen it work. All that good stuff.

So, for those of you who are unfamiliar, flexible seating is a movement or a classroom strategy where teachers set up their classrooms with a variety of seating options, all of which differ in some way or another from the traditional desk-facing-the-teacher situation. This can include beanbags, couches, rocking chairs, all sorts of things. It often features large tables for collaboration instead of desks, nooks for independent work, or lap desks for mobile work. And all of that seating is arranged in different zones or areas, some are set up to facilitate group work, some for individual work, large discussions, all different types of scholarly work.

The idea behind flexible seating is that each day, students come into class and make a decision about where and how they should learn that day. This is a way of differentiating your classroom to allow for different kinds of students, different learning styles, physical ability levels, personality types – all sorts of individual differences that our students come to class with on a daily basis.

A lot of the ideology behind this idea comes from an article by Teresa Strong-Wilson and Julia Ellis that explores the classroom environment as a type of teacher itself. So traditionally and historically, we usually consider parents and then educators as any child’s 2 main teachers, so you’ve got the parent and the educator, but Strong-Wilson and Ellis explore the environment as a third teacher from which our students gather information and construct knowledge. So this is essentially what flexible seating is about. It’s about leveraging our classroom environments to help students get the most out of our time with them.

So every teacher implements flexible seating differently, but what this looks like for my classroom is that I have a big selection of traditional desks, actually, if we’re being honest, more than I would ideally like to have, but those traditional desks are arranged in a U-shape, but I also in a far corner in the back have a small kitchen table with 4 chairs around it next to a bookshelf with a light. And then off to the side in a different corner, I have a carpeted space with beanbags, some floor pillows, and a large coffee table in the middle. And then throughout the room, I have scattered rocking chairs and papasan chairs with lap desks. And when students come into my classroom on the first day of school, I explain to them that they can sit wherever they want so long as they practice making smart choices for themselves.

This means that they have to come into class each day, self-assess their status and energy level, inventory what they know about how they learn, decide what tasks they have ahead of them that class, and then choose a seat that accommodates all those factors. So they have to take all of that into account and then make a choice based on those factors. If partway through class, they realize that they’ve miscalculated or they need to adjust, they can get up at any time without asking and find a new learning situation for themselves. No questions asked. They also should be aware that one learning choice may not be the right one for every single class. So some days might be a desk day where you come in and you think, “ok I really should be at a desk today,” for whatever reasons. And then another day you might come in and think “ah, I’m just gonna grab a blanket, curl up on the beanbag with a pillow,” and that could be what’s right for the student for that day. They have to come in and make that choice every single class session.

So most teachers who are new to Flexible Seating come in hot with the main question, which is ‘does this not create total chaos in class?’ I had the same question myself, but, surprisingly, it really doesn’t seem to cause much of a problem!

I do, to be fair, always tell my students that, if I see them repeatedly making a choice that does not serve their goals as a student or an individual, I will pull them aside for a discussion about what I’m seeing and what I think might help. And I have done that on multiple occasions, and I’ve never had a problem. Students honestly just genuinely appreciate the trust that I place in them in allowing them to choose their seating, and that at least partially I think makes them really conducive to taking guidance and correction really well. They’re usually very open to it, and we have great discussions around it.

It does happen pretty often that in the middle of class a student will get up from one seat, cross the classroom, and choose another seat, but, as long as we all know that this is something expected and normal, and a student does this relatively quietly, it doesn’t cause much of a disruption. Honestly, it can be a really nice break for that student and even sometimes the students around them just to kind of break focus for a little bit and then re-enter the conversation.

So this is my 3rd year employing flexible seating and every year I’ve increased my options. And, as I’ve done this, I’ve really started to develop an appreciation for some of the things flexible seating does for my classroom and for my students.

One of the biggest things I see my students doing with the flexible seating is thinking metacognitively. Thinking about how they think. And it’s so hard to get students to do this, but it’s such an important skill. They reflect on their own learning practices. I often with flexible seating see students watch themselves before, during, and after class. They are evaluating their effectiveness and ability to focus and then they’re making decisions based on that evaluation. I see students moving between zones for individual work, small group work, and then large group work, deciding for themselves what level of collaboration or independence is needed to complete a task. I often hear from parents and students that one of my students has gone home and asked to replicate a part of my classroom in their bedroom because they have found a study posture that works for them. So a student will order a beanbag and a lap desk and a lamp, or a rocking chair. Things that they’ve learned to use in my room – because they have learned about their own ways of thinking and studying, and they know that that’s something that works for them. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is a really valuable skill that they can take out of our classrooms and use for the rest of their lives.

I also really love that flexible seating promotes student voice in a real way. It implicitly by its very nature honors students by consistently asking them what works for them, what do they like, what makes them comfortable, and then trusting them when they make the choice. Even when they choose incorrectly, it honors the mistake and the intent behind it, and it allows for productive conversations about how to choose differently in the future if that ends up not being the best choice for them.

Flexible seating also promotes movement in the classroom. There are hosts of studies exploring how mentally, emotionally, and physically draining it is for adolescents to sit motionless in desks for hour-long increments. It’s just physiologically a really tough thing for them, and it’s not good practice. Flexible seating encourages students to get up, move around, choose a different seat, decide to work with a partner in a different zone of the classroom. It gets students moving in ways that are natural and authentic, but not distracting.

One of the biggest things I love about flexible seating is what I see it do for my own pedagogy. There is a really important self-accountability in it that, over the years, I’ve realized I need. I have zones set up for individual, small group, and large group work. If we go through 3 or 4 classes with no students choosing to work in those zones, I have to take a step back and look at the lessons I’ve been planning. Have my students been staring at me while I talk during our class time together? Have I accidentally become teacher-centric and taken control of what I want to be a very student-centric classroom? It’s a great way to check myself. My students should have ownership over their time with me, moving between different zones fluidly. And really only 1 of those zones should be the space where they are all sitting and watching me talk. The rest of them should be places where they as individuals or partners or small groups are taking ownership over the work and really becoming their own scholars.

Ultimately, flexible seating is also just really fun. It reminds students and teachers alike that students are individuals, each one is unique and each one is in need of an education that suits them. It’s a physical, tangible way of saying to students: “This classroom is about you. This class is about you. What do you need from me?”

Study after study has consistently reinforced that flexible seating done strategically and thoughtfully, boosts student performance and enjoyment in a class. It lowers anxiety, promotes collaboration and classroom community, AND it begins teaching students about what scholarship should look like for them as individuals. It gets them thinking about how they learn, what their study habits are or maybe what they should be, and how to set themselves up for success.

So if you’re interested in flexible seating, fortunately it’s not necessarily something that you have to jump into with both feet. You can start small. You can bring in a few chairs or offer a few small-scale alternatives to the traditional seating. If you spend some time looking online, there is a WEALTH of information on different options for setups, examples of what has worked, maybe some things that didn’t work as well, ideas for implementation with different age groups. Obviously flexible seating in an elementary classroom is gonna look really different than in a high school classroom. There’s also a lot of ideas on how to fund flexible seating: where to get the supplies and furniture you need. It’s a really cool movement, and there is an awesome online community that has formed around it. So, even if you’re just mildly curious, google around and see what educators have done with Flexible Seating. One thing I can almost definitely guarantee is, any movement you make towards a flexible classroom, your students are gonna love

So thank you for joining me today and for listening along with this episode of Prose and Context: the podcast for live giving teaching by the English Department at Lexington Christian Academy. Please subscribe to our podcast and tune back in next week for more topics in teaching and education!