Gail and Joan conferring in the midst of Joan's classroom.
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"Brainy" Classroom Design: An Interview with Joan Moser of "The Sisters" (AUDIO)
Joan Moser
Wouldn't it be a better world if we had interior designers with specialized knowledge of kids, literacy, and learning on call in classrooms? Those who live in the Pacific Northwest have the next best thing with The Sisters, Joan Moser and Gail Boushey. Their "Trading Spaces" courses are a special combination of learning research and artistic flair. Each class is a hands-on and minds-on rethinking of classroom design, attracting standing-room-only groups of teachers. The courses mix old-fashioned elbow grease in working together to transform a lucky colleague's classroom with looking as a community at the latest research into how people learn.
I've visited Joan's classroom, and it is like no other learning environment I've ever seen - virtually no student desks, and few chairs. In the place of all those chairs and institutional flotsam, there is a sense of peaceful invitation, of spaciousness and warmth.
Joan took the time just minutes after completing the latest Trading Spaces class with Gail to talk about how the environment remains the second most important teacher in any classroom. In this interview, she shares how recent brain research studies are changing the way she and Gail think about classroom design. I am amazed they get away with such provocative views on everything from furniture to lighting in coaching their colleagues - perhaps they do because they deliver their challenges to conventional thinking with such self-effacing good humor.
Listen to Joan share just a bit of the science and art of creating beautiful spaces for literacy learning in this ten-minute chat. The interview details some of the initial work Joan and Gail do with teachers to prepare them for rethinking classroom design.
If you are eager to roll up your sleeves and start rearranging your classroom after listening to the interview, Joan and Gail share some of their handouts from the "Trading Spaces" class elsewhere on the Choice Literacy site. You can access their reflective tools for classroom redesign by clicking on this link:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/142.cfm
Brenda Power
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