My students fight for a chance to sit in the three wheeled, swivel chairs and they are not even padded. They are four others in my room for the students who "need" them to learn. The computer lab has a full complement of adjustable chairs. Each teacher has a fine chair which I sincerely hope they rarely get a chance to sit in. This year I ditched the traditional student desk and went to tables and plastic stacking chairs. This was a significant improvement but naturally it is too expensive to buy comfortable chairs for each of my twenty-three students. After all, they only have to sit still in them for the entire day, or at least thirty minutes at a time broken by brief stretches.
Our school has committed to thirty minutes of InMotion above recess and lunch breaks. That amounts to an extra fifteen minutes morning and afternoon. For the much of the remaining time they sit. It costs too much to supply them with a decent chair.
Students tend to be in greater motion in my room. They can stand to work and move responsibly around the room as they need to. The design of the chairs is less important to us, but their chair still matters to them. I don't design sufficient activities for physically active learners. They are children. I need to remember their default mode is InMotion, not rest. Schools think they are responsible for training children to remain at rest as if it was a social virtue. In the medieval church people generally stood and shifted around the sanctuary as the mass progressed. Our schools remind me of the stark aesthetic of my ancestor's New England Congregational Church. Hard wooden pews and sit up straight. Learning is rigorous, learning is uncomfortable, the body should show the tension of the mind's struggle and focus. Sit still and sit up straight. I don't think so.
