Heart of the Matter: Elbow Room

Lou Spaventa, US

Lou Spaventa teaches and trains in California, the USA. He is a regular contributor to HLT - The Heart of the Matter series. E-mail:spaventa@cox.net

“Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in” Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher

As the lyrics assert, most people don’t like to be fenced in, crowded, seated elbow to elbow in a restaurant or…in a classroom. In just about any field of study, one can find an association between crowded conditions and aggressive or anti-social behavior. One of the least studied aspects of language instruction, in my opinion, is the link between the classroom environment and the receptivity of the learner. Years ago, Georgi Lazonov incorporated yogic breathing and relaxation techniques and a culturally rich, comfortable learning environment into suggestopedia, his method of language teaching, which he established in his native Bulgaria. Initially, reaction to Lozanov’s methodology and the incredible results of its application, for example, the retention of hundreds of vocabulary items in a short time, was that of ridicule. No English-speaking ESL professional was ready to accept Lozanov’s claims. By way of illustration, I can remember a time many years ago in Korea when I congratulated the director of a new language learning institute on the attractiveness of his classrooms, which included comfortable chairs and carpeted floors. He looked at me as if I were an alien, and our conversation came to an awkward halt. In the end, the claims of success Lozanov made for students attending his Bulgarian institute are of less importance than his contribution to a conversation about teaching. He put forth the contention that the learning environment and the comfort of the learner were integral parts of the learning process. Students of non-verbal learning are well aware of the influence of the impact the environment has on learning. Lozanov gave it a name in language teaching practice. He called it “double-planedness,” meaning that learners learn not only from the effect of direct instruction but also from the environment in which that instruction occurs.

Now think of a typical classroom in a typical school, anywhere in this world. How does it attract the learner to it? How does it suggest the possibilities for learning in comfort and how does it contribute to building an environment conducive to learning? Looking back over my nearly four decades of teaching, I would have to say that every classroom I have been in - save the suggestopedia classroom – does just the opposite: it repels the learner; it’s not a place in which one would want to spend time, and it denies any possibility for comfort and a positive learning environment.

I currently teach most of my classes in a room that opens to a portico where students often gather to chat, talk on their cell phones, shout to one another in passing, play guitars, skateboard over tiled pathways, and generally make a good deal of noise. The classroom has three large windows that are perpetually dirty. A large set of blinds can shield the classroom from direct sunlight, but they are also dirty and don’t work. They remain suspended between open and closed, a third of the way down the windows’ length. Inside the classroom, there are two walls covered in blackboards. Because there is a row of desks right next to one wall, the blackboard there cannot be used. The room has heat and air conditioning, something one would not think necessary in an ideal climate such as exists here in Santa Barbara, California. Nevertheless, the heat goes on at a certain point during the school year and often stupefies students. Or perhaps the air conditioning begins to blow, and students wrap their arms over their bodies to fend off the chill. In the front of the room where the teacher has a desk and chair, other unused items of classroom furniture are pushed against the wall: a massive metal file cabinet, two extra chairs, a lectern. The front blackboard has two maps furled above it. The height of each is difficult to reach without a stretch, and the maps often lose their fastness and quickly role back up once pulled down. There is the frame of a video monitor wall stand still appended to a wall without a monitor in it. The desks are trapezoidal and quite heavy. Each chair is also heavy. Any group work done brings with it the possibility of someone hitting someone else with the wayward leg of a chair or pushing the long end of the table into a classmate’s side. There is that little room. The aisles of the classroom are littered with student books and rucksacks. Skateboards and unicycles are often piled up on the wall behind the front door of the room. The back wall has two bulletin boards on it, both with bits of student projects from terms past or from other classes that share the room.

Is the picture dreary enough? On the first day of classes one semester, I had students stretched out on a dirty classroom carpet writing an assessment essay. Enough then.
It seems to me that the last thing any school administrator thinks about is the learning environment itself. Administrators think of classrooms as endpoints. It’s up to the instructor to make the classroom environment positive. True. But there is the little matter of common sense. We take care with our own living environments. We make our kitchens bright, our bedrooms comfortable, our living rooms inviting. We understand the role that non-verbal messages play in our daily lives. On the other hand, as administrators and instructors, we seem to deny any role for the classroom environment when it comes to student learning. The one possible exception here is elementary education. I do remember the zest with which my elementary school teachers decorated their rooms as the seasons passed. Yet even then, they were simply, as the current phrase has it, “putting lipstick on a pig” because the classrooms themselves were of a dreary sameness.

I believe strongly that non-verbal learning is as salient as verbal learning. We do learn the context of the learning along with the content. I can remember dozing through a course in educational administration after lunch in a smoke-filled room – yes, people smoked in graduate classrooms back then – with the sun shining through open windows on a cold winter day. The heat in the room was turned up, adding further to my state of suspended consciousness. Yet, I remember it all, the context even more than the content. So why should I suppose that the physical state of my classroom does not influence my students’ learning? It does. Is there anything more dreary or soul-sapping than a public housing estate? When you look at columns of housing towers, don’t you wonder about the quality of the lives of those who live there? The same goes for schools. My school, Santa Barbara City College, has a beautiful campus, which unfortunately becomes less beautiful every academic year as meadows become portable classroom buildings. The beauty of the campus is often said by newly enrolled students to be one of the factors that caused them to choose this college. But our classrooms are genuine disappointments. They neither foster nor celebrate learning.

“Hypermnesia”, a term associated with Georgi Lozanov’s suggestopedia, is the ability to recall vividly and strongly much more of what one has been taught then would be possible under normal teaching-learning conditions. How can we facilitate such learning? I find promise in green design which has as its goal creating sustainable positive environments. I believe that design on a human scale can create a domino effect and reach into our classrooms positively. Until our architects and planners learn a little more at the feet of E.F. Schumacher, we, as individual teachers, need to be mindful of our students’ unspoken reaction to the environment in which they learn. Yes, they can tough it out, and the miracle of human nature is that we are programmed to learn under any conditions. But why deny the common sense of what we already know? The context is as important as the content. We must do what we can to make that context pleasing to ourselves and to our students.

Please check the Expert Teacher course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.