A classroom tour, through the eyes of Anyon, Finn, and Kohn.

            Because there was less reading involved this week, because I’ve got Anyon heavily on my mind, and because of the rich opportunity for commentary this classroom tour provides, I’ll be taking a connections approach in this blog post. I’ll be analyzing the classroom on tour as an exercise in applying the generalizations Finn describes from Anyon’s work, which distinguish schools serving various class-based communities. While I imagine most schools serve a mix of the groups Anyon describes, it’s been my experience that schools often have a dominant theme being expressed despite the presence of sub-groups which may be from adjacent class backgrounds and will make up minority groups in a given school. Making inferences about the community this teacher serves, will also contextualize the limited amount of Kohn’s observations that I’ll be able to connect (as we aren’t provided the opportunity to observe the students interacting with this teacher to make further connections).  

Let me begin by admitting that this gal is hilarious to me, in a great way. Her manner of speech and personality reflects a teacher-type I have encountered several times in elementary and middle schools. Her lighthearted disposition and style of speech suggest she’s enjoying a low stress teaching environment: my first guesses are that she serves either a middle class or affluent professional community.  My assumption is that this person is of a middle to affluent professional class; teaching at a school serving a similar socioeconomic demographic as herself. Another way of expressing this is to say she serves a school community of families which likely make up somewhere between the top 20 percent to the top 10 percent of wage earners. As a California transplant, I wonder how much her southern Californian-ness affects the experience of watching this video for my class colleagues.  

 

Despite her frequent apologies for “messiness,” she keeps a remarkably organized and YouTube-influencer-optimized classroom space. The fact that she has time and energy to be so active on social media and is essentially moonlighting as a “Teacher-Influencer” strongly hints that she is working at a more affluent school setting. Also, the level of organization and task/outcome-oriented reminders throughout the room suggest middle class values. According to Finn’s analyses of Anyon, “[middle class students] are rewarded for knowing the answers, for knowing where to find the answers, for knowing which form, regulation, technique, or procedure is correct.” (Finn, 15) Here I’ll tie in Kohn’s assessment of what to look for in classrooms, and how the things he describes either suggest favorable or unfavorable classroom outcomes. This classroom space raises several of the red flags Kohn describes: suspiciously flawless student work on display; numerous lists, rules, and procedures on display and produced by the teacher; commercially produced posters, graphics, and purchasable, affiliate linked items being promoted, etc. There are also a few aspects to the room – the arrangement of table groups to facilitate interaction with peers – which fall under Kohn’s “good signs” list. Without getting to observe this teacher interacting with students its hard to comment much on the rest of Kohn’s indicators. I can imagine her potentially taking a saccharine or condescending tone with children (perhaps that’s bias against her southern Californian-ness, being from northern California I never suffered the unfavorable influences of proximity to Hollywood). 

 

While several features of this room speak to middle class values as described by Finn’s reading of Anyon, others hint at an affluent professional status of the school. As Finn describes, “knowledge in the affluent professional school [is] viewed as being open to discovery… work is creative and carried out independently…”(Finn, 16). Finn goes on to describe several student projects and activities, some of which show up in this classroom tour. For example, she describes their study of ancient Egyptian civilization and shows a display of student work featuring hieroglyphics: reflecting a project straight from Anyon’s observations at an affluent professional school. However, Finn does describe Anyon’s observations of affluent professional school spaces as including negotiations between students and their teachers which informed the primary work being accomplished: manipulating forms of symbolic capital (Finn, 17). Affluent professional schooling teaches students to develop a relationship which holds authority accountable, expects forms of autonomous and creative work, and accepts that they do not have complete control over the content or focus of their work… but will have autonomy in the work’s execution (Finn, 18). Some indicators of individualism and humanitarianism show up in the class tour, hinting at the affluent professional style; other indicators stressing possibility as a theme and suggesting that they are rewarded less for critical analyses and more for hard work toward the “pay off” of completing tasks “by the letter,” would reflect working class values as observed in Anyon’s study (Finn, 15). 

 

I don’t get the impression that there are any punitive or disciplinary systems in effect, I don’t think I saw any behavior shaping or reinforcement systems being implemented which tells me its less likely to be a working-class space. On the other hand, the space lacks some key features of what an executive elite space might reflect: striving for excellence as a community value, which would be reflected in the pace and rigorous nature of the work being engaged in, as well as higher levels of theoretical or conceptual engagement with material. I didn’t see any obvious indicators that there was student led teaching taking place, or any comments by the teacher indicating she interpreted her class positionality or authority to be subservient to that of her students (or their families). 

 

More data would be necessary to venture a more informed guess at the school’s class positionality and that of the teacher’s, but this exercise is analyzing the limited data available via the video tour is a helpful way to clarify the concepts Finn outlines in his telling of Anyon’s work. One criticism which has come up in class is that the model Finn describes seems pretty rigid and oversimplified, but I find that in application the contrasts provide clear metrics to assess real life contexts – most of which constitute a blend of class positions and values, usually with a dominant or majority theme which reflects observations made in Anyon’s research. 

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The blog where I found the picture I included for this post, has some helpful suggestions for intentional spaces in classrooms, as well as encouragement regarding the importance of creating a classroom space that students and teachers want to be in.