Rosie Colosi lives in New Jersey and is a reporter for TODAY Parents. She has bylines in The Atlantic, The Week, MSNBC, and PureWow, and she has written 33 nonfiction children's books for Scholastic, Klutz, and Nat Geo Kids. Once upon a time, she played Mrs.
You would never believe how much time and attention teachers put into this one area of classroom management: student seating arrangements. 'It is a big deal,' Salt Lake City educator Aimee Jensen tells TODAY.
com. 'My husband's in the army, and I think just as much planning goes into that as a seating chart.' She pauses and then adds, 'I'm kind of kidding but I'm not.' Forget placing kids in alphabetical order — teachers have many, many tricks up their sleeves when it comes to deciding where students should sit. 'It's just like a neverending game of musical chairs,' Jensen says. Just when a teacher thinks they've perfected their seating chart, two neighboring students will have a fight, others won't stop talking or parents will email with their own seating preferences. 'There's just so many things that you don't know on the surface that come to light really quickly once you put a kid next to another one,' she says. Currently spending the year outside the classroom to raise her baby girl, Jensen started creating online resources and entertainment for teachers. In December, she shared an Instagram post that posed this question: 'Teachers, what's your pettiest seating chart decision? Not separating friends, I mean the subtle power move.' Boy did teachers deliver! Each comment was smarter, funnier or more heartwarming than the last. Here is a selection of our favorites: 'On Valentine's Day, I sat everyone next to their crushes and all hell broke loose. It was epic.''When I have a kid who will talk to a brick wall, I seat them with a student who is still learning English. Everybody wins.''I put all the students who copy off everyone on one table. They had no idea who to copy from.''I once moved a kid on the wall under the whiteboard because I needed to pay THAT much attention to his constant antics. Turns out he was also highly depressed and suicidal at a young age. Because he was so close to me all day we became friendly and what I thought would be a punishment ended up being a life saving connection. That changed me.''I put the quietest and shyest students together and give small table projects getting to know each other. I’ve created five set of BFFs in my seven years.''Had a freshman who wrote a personal narrative about being too nervous to talk to his crush. For the next unit, I put them in the same group. They graduated in 2024 and are still together.' Jesnsen says of the online comments, 'It's just funny to read those things and just see that teachers really are paying attention to the smaller details of their students' lives.' Sometimes seating arrangements can bomb spectacularly. Jensen shared an experience with a few of the teachers who commented on her post: The seating chart she created was so disastrous that she gave the kids an extra recess so she could change all the seats back to their previous arrangement. 'It is just funny to see the strategy that does go behind it, so that you can maintain control of the space that you're in so that learning can happen,' she says.
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