Enforced Seating Plan and Mental Health

 I have often found myself wondering how many new teachers actually spend time looking through educational magazines.  I am betting that, today, fewer and fewer of them actually seek out professional growth ideas that way. I am convinced that few seek out any kind of professional growth through reading and yet it is one of the primary ways I have helped myself on the path to professional growth and improvement.  You are probably wondering where this is leading since I have declared myself to be finished with the classroom and so finished reading anything from the perspective of professional growth.  Well, you would be wrong. I have already determined that if my blog is going to be of any benefit to anyone, I had best be including in it, things that will resonate with new teachers or with colleagues who would be interested in preparing classroom teachers.  To that end, I took the time to look over articles published in the magazine Educational Leadership which arrived in my mail box yesterday.  Usually, I see affirmations of things I already knew or assumed, but today, amazingly, I found something that threw me for a loop and I bet it will throw others for the same loop.  This month's journal is all about Emotionally healthy kids and mental health in the classroom.  One of the articles I looked over made reference to the idea that students ought not to be allowed to sit wherever they want because it will, too often, compound the problems many students will be having with identity and depression and peer pressure and so forth.  AS soon as I read it, of course, it made perfect sense.  But without thinking about it, most of us would want to allow children to choose where they sit as an expression of t their growing independence and decision making.  We would also allow it because we would want to empower them more in our classrooms. On both counts, of course depending upon the child, we could be dumping more on to the shoulders of some children.  As soon as they have a choice, some students will be left out of the classroom cliques or pushed down on the pecking order of the classroom groups.  As I am writing this, I remember standing in line waiting to be chosen for a team in phys ed when the teacher gave two students the right to choose and I would be left till last because I couldn't play.  Now I can see where the teacher can, very benignly facilitate group cohesiveness and sense of belonging with every child but making sure they are not allowed to be isolated or picked upon.  When you give kids those kinds of choices, some kids are going to feel the pressure of rejection and that hurts. Trust me. I know from numerous times.  If you are an empowering teacher, you will find other ways to allow students to make choices.  But seeing choices like where you sit or with whom through the eyes of the child who is struggling with mental issues, it is obvious that there is no choice.  How I child feels about himself or herself ought not to be made worse by something we do in the classroom without malice or intent.  I am so glad I had that confront me this morning.  You are never too old to learn.  You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.