Innovation in Education Through Color and Chairs

Many years ago, Tony Hiss wrote an influential prize-winning book called, The Experience of Place (1990).  His point, stated simply, is that our environment impacts us profoundly.  His focus is on both cities and the countryside, and he shares how buildings and landscapes affect how we feel, what we think, how we react.  

I have often relied on Hiss' work. It has helped me think about space on a college  campus and at a law school. The design of my office as a college president was meant to signal "welcome," and it was Hiss' work that enabled me to appreciate the value of reflecting on space and place in new ways -- walls and halls included.

Hiss' book also infiltrated into my views on classroom design, starting with law school classrooms, many of which resemble a tiered lion's pit and extending to seminar rooms at colleges where tables are often arranged in a square or rectangle.  As we move to more engaged learning and as professors move (slowly) from being sages on stages to guides on the sides, I have wondered about the space we use to teach and provide professional development.  

And, there is a profound disconnect.

We conduct many college classes in lecture rooms. The same is true for professional development opportunities.  Many of the latter events are held in hotels where the rooms are set up to resemble a traditional classroom with rows and rows of chairs and a lectern or table at the front, often on a platform so the speakers are looking down (literally) on the participants.  And our presentations mirror the room set-up -- speakers speak and listeners listen.  

How exactly are we using space to encourage engagement?  And, could we use classroom space more effectively (walls and halls included) to message engaged pedagogy?  Simple answer: yes.

Now, to be sure, there are an increasing number of classrooms across the educational pipeline that have students sitting around a series of small tables, fostering interaction.  And, at hotels, round tables can be used so that participants can speak more intimately to those with whom they are sitting. We did that at the Department of Education too for some events.  Some hallways in schools have art or murals; some classrooms have whiteboards.  

The reality, though, is that most of the furniture in most classrooms and hotels is hard to move and one has to "ask" for special arrangements and re-set rooms for other classes and events, which takes time (and sometimes strength).  At some hotels, room arrangements require drawings of exact layouts.

But, based on a recent experience at Steelcase and a visit to their showroom in NYC, I think we have not been bold enough in terms of how we populate the interior of classrooms at educational institutions.  We have not used space enough to foster and support innovation.  Let me just focus on two things I observed at Steelcase: color and chairs.

One of the first things I noticed about the SteelcaseEdu classroom furniture was its color.  In most classrooms, we use bland colors and white or beige plastic and metal and perhaps wood or laminated tables.  Ask yourself what is on the floor of most classrooms?  A rug?  Tile?  Wood?  Steelcase (and perhaps there are other vendors) is using vibrant and upbeat colors and a single classroom could use many different colors.  We know from studies in hospitals that the color of the walls affects healing and a sense of wellness. In other words, that pea-green is a serious no-go.  So, furniture of appealing colors signals.

Next, the Steelcase chairs (made out of some easily cleanable plastic-like material) can move easily, and they are lightweight.  In fact, while sitting in one, I was intrigued by its moving parts -- the top surface, the wheels, even the seat it seemed. And, the chairs had a place for a can or a cup of coffee -- kind of like in a movie theatre.  Imagine: fewer spills and a recognition that older students do have beverages with them in class (even if just a bottle of water).  

Ask: does the teacher/professor need to be at the "front" and what is the "front"  if there is a circle or square set-up?  Should the teachers/professors be on a platform and behind (literally) a podium?  In the lower grades, why does the teacher's desk or home room teacher's desk have to be at the front of the room?  To be sure, I have seen classrooms where the desk is at the back or on the side. I have seen teachers and professor try to make their "traditional" furniture function more effectively.  But, why not eliminate the struggle?  What if the chairs and tables and desks could be moved with ease?  One could change up the feel of a room easily and fast.  Imagine a teacher spinning around a room in his/her chair.

In changing up the feel of a room, one would, one hopes, be changing too how we teach and how we engage and how we feel.  Changing colors and bringing in new chairs never will, in and of themselves, change the way we educate. Even the most innovative chairs/colors will not move an recalitrant professor or teacher.  I get that.

But, bold color and movable chairs can message the vibrancy of education, the capacity to move people and ideas -- literally and figuratively.  So, Steelcase reinforced for me what Hiss' said decades ago and still says today: place matters, and our experience in that space affects how we think, feel and I would add, learn.

This isn't, for sure and for real, a plea to rearrange the deck chairs on education's Titanic. No.  What I am suggesting is new chairs and new colors and new desks that will enable innovation.  Yes, there is a cost. That is true. But there is a cost, too, to keeping things as they were and as they are, while at the same time trying to change up how we do things and how we engage with each other.  

One can do battle in a Medieval suit of armor. But, in today's world, with the need to be nimble and to move fast and change course, we have military clothing that better matches how we fight battles.

Education is a battle too and we need to change the classroom equivalent of suits of metal armor.  It's time.