How I Got Started with Flexible Seating

What is Flexible Seating?

What I love about the teacher Instagram community is that I am constantly inspired by the things I see in my feed and what other teachers are doing. One of the latest educational trends I’ve been seeing all online teacher communities is flexible seating.

In short, flexible seating is purposefully designing your classroom to feature a variety of work spaces and allowing students the choice to sit where they work best. You can choose to vary the physical seats themselves (such as switching out regular chairs for stability balls, stools, or pillows) or changing the work spaces entirely by mixing traditional seating with couches, high top tables, standing tables, or an endless variety of other seating arrangements.

While this may sound like a novel idea, and for some, a little bit crazy, modern workplaces, especially technology companies, and start-ups have been ditching cubicles and replacing them with couches, communal tables, and standing desks for years.

A visit to my husband’s office and a small classroom experiment solidified my decision to implement flexible seating in my high school classroom.

Today's Offices use Flex Seating for their Employees

When I walked into my husband’s office, I was greeted by warm lighting, long rows of communal tables with standing stations in the center. People were immersed in their work while sitting comfortably on couches or sitting in groups at a high top table. The atmosphere was inviting and welcoming, but everyone was clearly busy working. There was a soft buzz of people typing away solo while others were engaged in conversations around their laptops.

My first thought was, “Wow! This is exactly what I want my classroom to be like!”. And don’t we all? Isn’t that our goal as classroom teachers? To create a safe, welcoming environment where our students feel empowered to do their best work?

If companies have realized that allowing their employees to have the freedom to choose how they work best leads to greater productivity, why are schools still expecting that students sit in desks for 6 hours a day?

My Experiment with Flexible Seating

After seeing that flexible seating works for adults, I decided to experiment a little in my classroom.

I had no colorful furniture or cute decorations, and I honestly still doubted that I could trust my 10th graders to do their “best work” if they were able to pick with who and where they wanted to work. So in June when we were prepping for our state exam, I tasked students with outlining an essay in class.

The day before, I went to every student while they were working and asked them if they preferred to work alone, in a pair, or in a small group and told them that tomorrow, I would be letting them choose where they wanted to sit and who they wanted to work with, provided that they do their best work.

Surprisingly, students were honest and did not simply pick their best friends to work with. A majority of my students genuinely wanted to work with a person who they felt pushed them to do their best and most wanted to work with another person or small group.

After school that day, I arranged my room to be ready for this experiment; I put 5 desks against my wall of windows with their backs to the rest of the class for optimum focus, I pushed desks together to create a few tables of 4, and I pushed the rest of the desks together in pairs of two.

When my students entered the room the next day, their names and seating assignments were on the board, and true to my word (except for a few exceptions based on behavior and classroom management needs) I had placed them based on their survey.

Their task that day was to outline and write an essay, a painful but necessary task. And they were ON TASK. I was so astounded by how this tiny little change worked so well that I actually recorded videos to show my coworkers.

Even my worst behaved class that was never on task and had made me want to quit teaching so many times was actually working. Like they really working, I’m not joking.

Here were kids, who only a few months ago, were banned from choosing their own group to work. The one time I allowed them to choose their own groups I created such chaos that I had to stop the class to lecture them about how this is why we can never do fun things. This group was suddenly working diligently on the most boring of classroom activities.

When I reflected on what had happened (because I was still in disbelief), I realized that this seemingly magical change in behavior was due to two factors.

First of all, I stopped trying to push square pegs into round holes. Meaning, I had students, as I’m sure who you do too, who never wanted to work with others. They had “challenging” personalities and I always forced them to work with a partner, which always resulted in classroom management issues. For once, I actually just let them work on their own, and for the most part, they just sat quietly and did their work. No attitude.

Secondly, I saw firsthand how having students take ownership of their learning affects their attitude about their education. I told students straight up when I surveyed them, “I want you to succeed and be able to write this essay the best you can. What do YOU think will help you do this?”

When students had the onus put on them to learn, rather than be told to learn, they rose up to the challenge.

Those two experiences helped me realize that flexible seating is right for me and my classroom. After that is when I started to get to work!

My First Steps

The very first thing I did when I decided to implement flexible seating is go to my Assistant Principal for his approval.

I showed him the videos I took of my worst behaved class being so productive and showed him the Instagram posts of teachers who were my flexible seating icons (@theengagingstation and @teachlikeyoumeanit). I told him I wanted to turn my classroom into a home and spoke to my values of community building. Thankfully, he was super supportive and even offered to help me if I needed any handy work done!

Next, after his approval, I went to my principal, seeking his blessing as well. Luckily, both my direct supervisors approved.

Then, it was on to the task of actually getting the seating I needed to actually have flexible seating. I started by exploring my school’s basement, which was an adventure in itself. While I had emailed the proper administration and gone through the proper channels, I was having trouble getting a proactive response.

So finally, I channeled Leslie Knope and just went down into the basement myself and wrangled some extremely kind and helpful custodians to give me a tour of its cavern-like rooms and I found a bunch of chairs and tables for my classroom! And I may or may not have switched out a bunch of those chairs for nicer chairs (that were not being used!) from our sad version of a teacher’s cafeteria.

I had a love seat and area rug that I was storing my mother-in-law’s garage and decided to bring those into my room.

Additionally, I created a Donors Choose campaign for lap desks and bean bag chairs that miraculously was funded!

My goal is to have a section along my wall of windows that includes either bar seating or high top seating as individual workstations, but I still am not totally sure if I’m even allowed to build anything in my room. So that is a work in progress, I’ll keep you updated!

Until I get back into my classroom, I’m making some small purchases here and there at dollar stores for decorations. I’m really excited to make progress and to share with you my classroom transformation!

#flexibleseating