Teach Middle East Podcast
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Teach Middle East Podcast
How to Design Classrooms for Better Student Engagement with Jenny Mollon
Join Jenny Mollon in this podcast episode as we examine classroom design and how it can improve student engagement. We also discuss the impact of layout and atmosphere on learning and emotional well-being and the transformation of classrooms from traditional learning environments to spaces that develop adaptable skills for future careers.
Jenny provides insights into creating environments that support both individual concentration and group collaboration, helping students feel connected and focused.
Listen in as we explore how to maximise every part of a school, including halls and libraries, to enhance learning and community involvement.
Connect with Jenny here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferfmollon/
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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
Connect with Leisa Grace:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace
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Hi everyone. This is Lisa Grace and we are back on the Teach Middle East podcast. Today we are chatting with Jenny Milan, a familiar face in the region. She used to be in Dubai working in and around schools with a company that shall remain nameless. I'm joking, it's fine. She used to be with school advisor in schools compared, but now she's with Kidsink and we are chatting about classroom design and layout and how that affects learning today.
Speaker 2:You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast, Jenny.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me. I've always admired your work, Lisa Grace. It's really exciting to be here today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, and you know, it's one of those things when I was approached to talk about this on the podcast, I thought as a teacher I taught for too long. I can't even put the limit on how long I taught for 20 odd years I never sat down to think about, apart from my groupings and my settings et cetera. I never really gave too much thought to the layout of the classroom. So I'm going to kick it off with Jenny. How does the layout and design of the classroom furniture impact student engagement? Do you think?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, first of all, I think I would start by saying we all know how different we can feel when you walk into any building. You know the UAE I'm back in the UK now but the UAE is home to some just incredible buildings but they all create kind of a different feeling inside of you. You know our environment impacts how we feel, and I'm an ex teacher as well. Elisa Grace and I know that how the children are feeling is so impactful in terms of what they're going to come out of the end of that day. Having learned, you know we want a positive feeling, we want a positive environment and I think you know quite often we hear this term about. You know, careers of the future. What are our children going to do in the future?
Speaker 3:The way classrooms have been designed for the last 100 years or so is really it was been about this kind of teacher stood at the front of the classroom delivering information that's going to set children up for those traditional careers of the past. You know the kind where they needed to absorb certain pieces of information and go away and utilize them in their job Now in the future. We know, first of all, we know that our kids are going to probably have a couple of careers. We know that they're going to have all sorts of different careers that we've not come up with yet. You know that this is this is a topic of conversation that goes around a lot.
Speaker 3:So why are our classrooms set up? Why are we delivering education in the same spaces and the same you know environmental feel, as we've done for many, many years? It doesn't make sense. I'm sure you know. I know in your podcast you're constantly talking to teachers about innovations in the world of education, the way in which they teach, the pedagogy. You know the different styles, curricula, these things, but what hasn't perhaps changed is the environment that those children are sat in might look a bit prettier, but actually you look at a lot of classrooms and you know I'm, you know, mid 40s now and I look at a lot of classrooms and I think it's not too dissimilar from where I was sat in my you know Catholic primary school, way back when listening to my teacher in the days before the British National Curriculum was even a thing you know. So life is evolving, spaces are evolving. Schools need to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're so right. I think when we we think of classrooms really have just one way of thinking of them and we never think of them the way we would think about how we design our homes and our rooms and our spaces to actually fit around our lifestyle. We normally just have this one fixed mindset about classrooms. Tell me, Jenny, how do you think our design of the classroom affects the way students concentrate or even collaborate during learning activities?
Speaker 3:There's a couple of things there, you know. I mean, I became a mom in the Middle East and one of the best pieces of advice anybody over gave me was to look you know that expression every child needs a village and, of course, when you're an expert in the Middle East, perhaps you don't have that village, that your typical village around you, and so one of the best pieces of advice I received as a mum is to look at a school or your child's nursery as that village and to rely on them. And so I really believe that, particularly in the Middle East, you know, as schools, they are a second home to children. They are so important because they're a real fundamental of that community that our child is growing up in and they need that community so very badly. And I think so.
Speaker 3:Creating a school that creates a sense of belonging, where they feel truly at home, truly comfortable, that to me is a foundation. You know that to me is the foundation of impacting how they're going to learn, what they're going to learn. And you can walk into some schools and they can feel, you know, let's be honest, some schools in the Middle East can feel quite corporate. You know, they can feel very big, intimidating bit office, like you know. We need to get away from that. We need to think this is a hub of children's lives. Let's start by making somewhere where they can feel that they have ownership over and where they really belong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, give me some specifics, like what can we do to those environments to increase concentration, increase that sense of belonging, make it more nurturing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean sure.
Speaker 3:I mean I think one of the things we look at doing at Kids Inc is making sure that, you know, it might even be a little bit of a cliche around this world of designing schools, but it's having flexible learning spaces, you know, and that means having spaces where perhaps children who work better can have, you know, an enclosed, smaller space, some sort of cubby or quieter zone, there's a space for group collaboration where they can move out to.
Speaker 3:So maybe we have reconfigurable desks, we have cubbies, we have areas in classrooms that can be treated differently, acoustically as well, you know, particularly for the neurodiverse amongst us, I think that's a really important thing that you know sometimes that background noise and distraction that can happen in the classroom, for some kids it's an energizer and it gives them a buzz, and for some kids it's a huge distraction.
Speaker 3:So I think, having the flexibility that a teacher can look around their class, identify the unique needs of their children and reconfigure a classroom to meet those needs in terms of you know, okay, I've got two kids with ADHD in here. How am I going to engage them in this week's work? Maybe actually this week they need to be sat together because they're going to inspire each other, or maybe they need to be sat with that particular child, or maybe they need to be in a sort of quieter zone. It's just really about building in that flexibility and actually that traditional classroom set-up where perhaps we've got rows or blocks of desks. There's very little flexibility around that. So I think we would certainly look at having different styles of seating tables and a lot of flexibility, a lot of reconfigurable furniture to allow teachers, I think, to make the decisions on what their class needs on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that you guys do the whole classroom setup and you provide all the furniture and you help with the design and stuff. But let's say a teacher already has their classroom set up and they don't have too much choice as to who their supplier is or what's put in there. How can they judge it up and make it a little bit more welcoming create?
Speaker 2:a flexibility, do you?
Speaker 1:have any tips for them. What can they do? I've been thinking about colors.
Speaker 3:I think certainly thinking about color. Color is a big thing. Again, we can have classrooms that feel quite clinical and quite stark and I think, adding in some softness around colors, I think, perhaps toning down that that's. I think. Perhaps when I was young the whole thing was primary colors and kids love bright stuff and I still.
Speaker 3:I walk into my son's primary school in the UK and every chair in his classroom has a different color. Some are yellow and some are blue and it's probably because it's a UK state school and they've kind of inherited them over time. But there's a distraction in itself. So if there's ways in which you can gently tone down color, even looking at your displays on the walls I know a lot of teachers are highly creative with those things but they do create a visual environment that can be too much for some kids, maybe adding in some softness with. You know we see things like rugs in classrooms for younger children and then suddenly they disappear at about kind of age six, seven, year one in the British system, and again there's that hominess. That's kind of where's it gone? Why is it gone?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you said something that was quite you know apt. When we have primary classrooms they tend to be a lot more homey, more comfortable. And my sons now, who have essentially grown up here in the Middle East and now in year seven, so they're now in secondary school, and their classrooms have changed from these nice little cubby old reading corners, beautiful little spots that they can go off to and do group work and thinking, to secondary school and now they're very much more in sort of like a corporate setting where there are desks and chairs and interactive whiteboard and normal whiteboard and nothing else. And what can secondary schools do? And I'm thinking for the older kids, what can they do to create that flexible and adaptable classroom for the older ones?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think actually one thing you said there is that they, you know they feel a bit office like these classrooms. But actually do you know what, if you go into offices now, certainly if you came and visited a kid's inks office, thinking of things like the KHDA's office, I'm sure you've been there, lisa Grace. Actually they are really warm, welcoming environments, loads of different seating opportunities. You know, for the people who want to have a meeting in a, you know, over a coffee, there's space to go and do that. For people who want to sit with their laptops together, there's space to go and do that. So actually I think the world of work is moving faster than the world of classroom design, because I think actually you don't go into so many offices that are set up in that kind of perhaps cubicle style, you know 1990s style office that perhaps first brings to mind, you know, there is that much more kind of co-working feel to a lot of offices now and I think perhaps that's what schools need to look at doing in their secondary classrooms and in their secondary spaces. One thing I would say is that, you know, if you don't have perhaps too much scope to make big changes, look at the way you use your corridors. You know the corridors can be actually an opportunity for flexible working, for breakout spaces.
Speaker 3:One of the schools that we sort of reinvigorated, redeveloped in the last couple of years was Horizon International School in a scheme, and you know that's. But there was a school that was built, you know, maybe 20 years ago now, and the architecture of it you know. We had these long corridors and said you know, what can we do to make them more useful? And now they're these amazing co-working spaces. They are breakout spaces for the children. So they are these spaces where, okay, you're not absorbing this lesson in this traditional format. How else can I give you an opportunity to absorb what you need to learn? Okay, we've made much better use of our corridors, now you know.
Speaker 3:So I think, even if your school is perhaps that more traditional setup, just thinking differently about the space is the library as well. You know libraries can actually, again, you know that kind of co-working hub desk. You know, a space where a child can go. I know a lot of libraries might have that at the moment, but it's not in an elevated way. I think, looking at your library slightly differently and perhaps thinking about it as more like a hybrid working space as well. That's something that teachers and schools could be doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I talk a lot in my work about the future of education, not like I have any kind of crystal ball, but I like to imagine what it could be and in my imaginings or imagination I always think of schools becoming a little bit more of a hybrid model, where you are in school especially for the older kids, not the younger one but you're in school, sometimes you're outside, sometimes you're in offices or you're in different places getting different experiences. And then I also start to wonder, if we move in that direction, what can schools outside of the classroom? What can schools do with their spaces to make it more inclusive to the community? Because that's how I see schools going.
Speaker 3:I 100% agree and I want. One idea that I love and I know that we're working with a lot of our clients around is having actually a co-working office space in a school. So schools can perhaps tap into the network of local entrepreneurs, local business people. Perhaps their parents can be there. We all know what it's like trying to drop your kids at school and rush off to an office and get there on time, particularly in the UAE. I know that all of my friends who are still in the UAE it's all about traffic at the moment. It just creates a different lifestyle around schools. But I think if you can open up some spaces and say look, you know, local entrepreneurs come and use this space, have a free co-working space, but give back some time, give some mentorship to our students, I think that's a great opportunity for schools. And again it comes back to that idea of schools being a hub for the community, to being really central to our communities, and again I think in a space like the UAE that's really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's a lot that can be done with that. There's a lot of scope that can, you know, make it so that schools become really the hub, because we love to say our school is a community school, but exactly what do you mean by that? And I completely agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, okay, it's a community, because we see the parents at the gate waving them off and they come in for those moments that we've invited them in. But how much is our community? You know, there are so many ways in which you know business. People can mentor and give information that teachers haven't got. The world of work is moving really fast. It's hard for teachers to keep up, you know. But invite people who are at the sort of cutting edge of different industries into your school to work, to allow children to see what they're doing, to experience what they're doing in that way. Really powerful, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. That's kind of where my crystal ball is telling me that schools need to go. Yeah, my kids do too, yeah. And so now that you are on that side of the fence with kids in, what are you guys doing differently to reimagine learning spaces?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think first of all, what we do at Kids Inc is we totally focus on education. We're not doing hotels and offices and a lot of architectural interior design firms. That's what's happening. They might do one school, but they'll also do a housing project or everything we do is around education.
Speaker 3:So my role I'm director of education at Kids Inc, so I spend a lot of time, first of all, kind of up-skilling at architects to understand education today and to make sure that they understand different curricula, because, do we know, the look and feel of a British curriculum school is quite different perhaps to an IB. I think when you visited lots of schools, you start to get your eye in and you can think, okay, this is probably a British curriculum school from the way it's set up and this is probably an IB curriculum, without anybody having to tell you. And I really want our architects to understand that we spend a lot of time talking about pedagogy. We spend a lot of time looking at people like yourself, influences in the world of education and understanding what you're talking about, so that our architects and our designers can translate them into their designs. And I think that's what we're doing differently really is we're not trying to take what we know about a commercial space or an office space and just stick it in a school. We start with education. We employ educators. I'm an ex-teacher. There's many other ex-teachers on our teams. This is what we want to do. We want to understand education. We want to know where educators see education going so that the classrooms we design today can flex for the curricular of the future as well.
Speaker 3:Because that actually leads into another really important point, which is sustainability, and again, real buzzword. I know you just said COP28 in the UAE. Everybody's talking about sustainability, but to me, what's a really sustainable classroom? It's not just one that's perhaps designed to incorporate I don't know FSC certified wood and their furniture and that kind of thing, which we do, all of that but actually is a classroom that can be adapted in the future without having to replace everything. That's true sustainability, isn't it? Yeah, that is so true. We can make a classroom that can adapt to the future using what's there at the moment, and that's a sustainable classroom.
Speaker 3:Right Because it definitely reduces the time.
Speaker 1:And when you think of where it's all going because this is my final question, I love to ask this question. I'm such a like a futurist when do you see it all going? The world of classroom design and school design what do you see happening?
Speaker 3:I think first of all I think it's what we're trying to do we're inviting students into our offices all the time and into our factory all the time. We run an internship program and that kind of thing because we want to hear what students think as well. So I think leaning into an understanding and hearing their experience and what frustrates them, perhaps, about how their classrooms and their school environment is set up, is really important. I think you're right in terms of that kind of hybrid education. I think perhaps a lot of schools will have some sort of set up where they have full time schooling, but also perhaps a hybrid option where you come in and do your specialist subjects, perhaps in a sort of specialist subject hub, and then there's some online options as well. It's been interesting actually I've got to digress a little bit here but my son in the UK I don't know if you would have read about it, but a lot of schools here have been affected by this issue with rack concrete, so kind of basically concrete that's crumbling in the schools. There's been a lot of schools that had spaces closed and actually my son's school here in the UK was the worst affected. He's the whole of the country, so he pretty much did last term as a hybrid term.
Speaker 3:So, and I said it was like COVID times again and I must admit I approached it at the start with a sense of dread because we'd all been through this crisis time of educating our children at home. But this time around it was different and I think A we were prepared for it so because we'd been through it with COVID, and so we were much better primed to make it a positive experience. And do you know what? It has been really positive. He's had that hybrid learning experience. He's done lots of different things. He's pushed him to try lots of different extracurricular activities. So I think I've probably, if you'd asked me that question in September, I would have said something a bit different. But actually, having been through the last few months with him, I definitely, as a parent, have seen a more positive side to what we all experienced during COVID that hybrid learning bit of home learning, going into school at some times. This time around it's been positive and it's been good and I can see the benefits.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. So you see us going down that hybrid route with more comfortability. We won't be too scared.
Speaker 3:Do you know what? As teachers, we always talk, don't we? About creating education that works for each unique child, and I think it's about having options. Of course, some children will still, and probably the majority of children will still, be in school on a typical five day a week pattern. You know that's a given, I think. However, I think, when it comes to giving people options, when it comes to creating a school that fits for each individual child, or two neurodiverse children myself, you know, I know what they need and I know sometimes they, you know, a day at home really benefits them. Giving parents, giving families those options, I think that's what schools need to be doing, and I think designing spaces that serve that is what you know. Businesses like Hiddsing need to be doing as well.
Speaker 1:Amazing, great. It's a great place to end the pod. Thank you, jenny.
Speaker 3:Oh, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you so so much for having me, Lisa Grace, I will put your LinkedIn Connect link in the podcast notes and if people want to connect with Jenny, feel free to do so and to learn more about the work that she's doing at Hiddsing. Thanks so much, Jenny, for being on the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmedaleastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.
