Building Your Classroom Environment Through Flexible Seating

By: Caitlyn Pagnottaro, ECSEAT Scholar

There’s a lot of things that children tell us every day and a lot of messages that they send us, even if we don’t receive those messages verbally in a way that we can understand. That’s why as educators it’s important for us to have the ability to recognize whether a child can’t do something simply because it’s too difficult, or because we haven’t provided them an environment where they’re comfortable and capable of doing the work. That’s the whole idea behind flexible seating.

More and more educators in grades K – 3 are adding this into their practice where children get to choose their own workspaces. Traditionally, children would be introduced to their desk space labeled with their name, but instead teachers are introducing them to spaces that they can choose to work from such as crate chairs, exercise balls, kneeling tables and much more. It’s up to the student to choose where they think they’re going to do their best work. For a lot of children, it’s not ideal to be sitting in a rigid chair for prolonged periods of time, some of them need the small movement and flexibility that an exercise ball could provide, some of them just want to stand and do their work and that’s okay. We should allow for this kind of flexibility because when we allow children to make their own choices, they feel more empowered in their learning and I think it also makes them feel more driven.

            We start forcing children to sit at assigned tables in kindergarten and with the transition into full day kindergarten programs; children are sitting at tables for even longer. I can imagine how much of a shock this would be to a young child who hasn’t been expected to sit in a chair and do work. This is so unnatural to a child in addition to already being in an unfamiliar environment. Classrooms need to be made to feel like a second home to children in a way that they feel more at ease and ready to learn. Children spend their entire day in a classroom so it makes sense that it begins to feel like home and we can help that transition become much smoother. A child who’s constantly looking around the room and can’t focus on their work isn’t a bad student and the question shouldn’t be “what’s wrong with this child?” Instead it should be, “what’s preventing this child from learning and what can we do to help them get past that obstacle?” Even more so we should be removing the obstacles altogether in order to make learning accessible for everyone. I know that when I’m in an environment that I’m unfamiliar with, around people I hardly know that I tend to be much more quiet. However, that’s not how I am all of the time and I know that when put in a setting that I’m familiar with, I’m much more outspoken and outgoing. As adults we know these little details about ourselves and if we know that this is how we are as adults, then we need to also realize that children are the same exact way. We need to think about how we would behave in an environment we’re not comfortable in and translate that into how a child would behave in an uncomfortable environment because their coping mechanisms aren’t as developed as ours are. Put a child in a setting that clearly makes them anxious and set them up to fail, but put them in a setting that makes them comfortable and happy and they’re going to show you skills you never even knew that they had.

            Returning to the idea of flexible seating in the classroom, this allows children to make decisions and take charge in their learning which in turn would make them much more comfortable in their environment. Putting children in a situation where they’re able to make their own choices about the learning they do is the best way to ease their anxiety and help them to focus on the task at hand, whether it’s simply coloring or doing some word work. Giving a child choice automatically gives them much more of a sense of freedom that they didn’t have before. Forcing them to sit in an assigned spot and do work that’s challenging for them makes it almost impossible for some children instead of “just” challenging. Years and years ago we made furniture suitable for young children so they could feel as though the classroom was made just for them, now we need to take it a step further and create more spaces for learning so everyone feels ready to learn, no matter what their abilities are.