Today, multiple activities are occurring in our classrooms within one meeting period. Teacher and students are mobile, moving from group discussions to lab experiments, from project presentations to preparations for field trips. Teaching spaces must accommodate a plethora of activities, including set-up and breakdown of labs, temporary storage of samples collected on field trips, the use of potentially hazardous materials, investigations with new technology, and student work outside of class time. Adequate space and flexibility of space are both critical if we are to realize fully our pedagogical goals for student inquiry and experiential learning. The increased emphasis on lab work and the resultant planning, set-up, and breakdown time suggest that each teacher needs his or her own teaching space designed for lab work.
Labs are a daily activity in each of our classrooms.
Our goal is to use lab work whenever possible to teach concepts, answer student questions, and build technical skills. As a result, we are spending more time in lab preparation. Some labs require half an hour to prepare, others may take three or four, and some labs need to remain in place for several weeks. In addition, we are doing more unscheduled labs and changing the set-up of our classrooms more often to accommodate each day's investigation. We need teaching spaces that are designed to support daily lab work, that allow each teacher adequate time to prepare, and that each teacher may arrange to suit the lesson and their teaching style.