While most teachers solely teach in their own classroom, two teachers traveled to different rooms for classes. Art teacher Samantha MacAuley taught Graphic Design Fundamentals in graphic design teacher Travis Kohler’s classroom during the blocks she was not teaching her regular art classes in her own room. Art teacher Bryan Lloyd and journalism teacher Kathy Habiger shared Habiger’s classroom to teach Photo Imaging.
Lloyd used the opportunity of sharing a classroom to learn new things to improve his teaching.
“A positive of sharing is that I can learn from Habiger about the way she runs things and about the journalism program in general that I otherwise would have never known,” Lloyd said. “There are things that Habiger really excels at that I try to repeat in my classes. I can look at what she’s been successful with and get better at what I do to supplement her program.”
Kohler described the challenges of having someone else teach during his plan period.
“It’s convenient when I don’t have to share a classroom with someone else,” Kohler said. “It can be difficult having to relocate anytime MacAuley is teaching in my classroom. It’s challenging because I always have to make sure that my room is clean and organized so that MacAuley can teach without all my stuff in the way.”
While sharing classrooms seemed simple, MacAuley explained how it confused some of her students.
“I know it can be difficult for my graphic design students to understand at first, a lot of them take a few weeks to realize that the graphic design room isn’t my classroom,” MacAuley said. “Sometimes they see me in my own classroom in B wing and are surprised to see me there.”
Sharing can be challenging, but Kohler believed the positives outweigh the negatives.
“Since MacAuley and I teach the same class, if she has a problem, or if I have a problem, we can talk about it before or after class because we’re going to be in the same space and it’s easy to collaborate that way,” Kohler said. “Also, having to make sure that my room is always clean for her can be hard, but it does keep me on task. I think that while there are negatives about sharing, the benefit of us sharing a classroom outweighs them.”
Overall, Lloyd said he loved teaching his classes in separate locations because of their big differences.
“I love teaching Photo Imaging because it’s so clean and tidy and I love that it’s in a separate space,” Lloyd said. “Ceramics is wonderful because it’s a big mess and it’s nice to have that contained in a different room.”
