Tinkering...

New table? Since Tyack and Cuban talk about one very small example of a "tinker" (the not-quite-jigsaw-puzzle classroom), I'll mention my furniture pet peeve: rectangular tables that make working in groups more difficult for students and teachers. Most of you are secondary-school teachers, but it's very common for elementary teachers to have rectangular tables at which students sometimes work in groups and sometimes are told to turn 90 degrees to face the front of the room. (Less useful yet are arrangements where teachers make some students face entirely away from the most common dry-erase board.) My proposal for a "tinker" would be a group table where students can face each other or face towards the front of the classroom and still have a desk surface they can work on.