Hallways: The Original PLN

Social net­work­ing, if you believe half of what you read, is a 21^st-​​century, Web 2.0 phe­nom­e­non that has exploded onto our cul­ture through our youth.

Any­one that was around before the Web was even a 1.0 knows this is hog­wash. Social net­work­ing has been around as long as there have been humans. The older I get, the more I under­stand that every­thing comes down to rela­tion­ships. My suc­cess as a teacher, in par­tic­u­lar, depends far more on the rela­tion­ships I develop than it does on what I know or my ped­a­gog­i­cal skills. There are many tech­nol­ogy tools that I’m learn­ing to use to strengthen and grow those relationships.

But the more I think about social net­work­ing, the more I real­ize that we’ve had them in our schools for­ever. They’re called hall­ways. Class­rooms may be where instruc­tion takes place, but they are essen­tially pri­vate islands, iso­lated from the school com­mu­nity. The hall­ways are the pub­lic face of the school, and they are where the con­nec­tions hap­pen. I’ve observed a few things tak­ing place in hall­ways over the last few weeks that I’m con­vinced make schools oper­ate well and make the learn­ing that takes place in the class­rooms more effective.

Class­room “Home Page”

As I walk through a school, I can some­times get a glimpse of what is going on inside a class­room through the door. More often, though, I only know about the class through their pub­lic face: the hall­way space just out­side. Some teach­ers use this inter­nal build­ing “home page” to the fullest, giv­ing us ongo­ing, devel­op­ing pic­tures of what the stu­dents are learn­ing and their growth over the year. In my expe­ri­ence, these class­rooms and these teach­ers are the ones gen­er­at­ing the most learning.

Cour­tesy and Respect

Within a class­room, the stu­dents and teacher nego­ti­ate over the course of time an under­stand­ing of how things will work. Often, the rules–stated and unstated–can vary widely from one room to another. I visit four­teen dif­fer­ent class­rooms besides my own every week, and I see so many dif­fer­ent sets of pro­ce­dures and expec­ta­tions for behav­ior it is some­times dif­fi­cult to keep track of what is appro­pri­ate in each.

But the hall­way is a dif­fer­ent world. Out there, every­one in the build­ing, as well as the larger com­mu­nity, have to func­tion with more broadly accepted rules of cour­tesy and respect. It is in the hall­ways of a school that many young chil­dren first learn the con­cepts of pass­ing on the right and stop­ping at inter­sec­tions. They need to learn how to travel as a group, and when to allow oth­ers to have the right of way; how to be aware of oth­ers’ per­sonal space and respect­ing the learn­ing going on in rooms as you pass; wait­ing your turn, nav­i­gat­ing new spaces, and han­dling respon­si­bil­ity. (Do you remem­ber the excite­ment and anx­i­ety you felt the first time you were cho­sen to be the messenger?)

Col­lab­o­ra­tion and Planning

We teach in an inclu­sive envi­ron­ment today which requires more than pos­si­bly ever before that teach­ers work together and share respon­si­bil­i­ties within class­rooms. The real­ity of school sched­ules means that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of that plan­ning hap­pens on the fly. It is com­mon for me to run into a col­league as I pass by in the hall and we will stop to have an impromptu meet­ing to dis­cuss a stu­dent or plan an upcom­ing les­son together. The hall­way is some­times the only oppor­tu­nity I get dur­ing a day to see and inter­act with my fel­low teachers.

Com­mu­nity Infrastructure

Within a school com­prised of indi­vid­ual class­rooms and grade lev­els, the hall­ways pro­vide a means to develop a larger, build­ing com­mu­nity. Office bul­letin boards, par­ent spaces, the school store, the main lobby, and hall­ways out­side com­mon areas like the gym, cafe­te­ria, and audi­to­rium, are all oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ing the unique cli­mate and char­ac­ter that defines a school. The hall­ways in a school set the tone, and can tell you a great deal about how tightly con­nected the net­work there is. I can often sense within a few min­utes of walk­ing into a school what the cli­mate is like and how peo­ple will inter­act there.

Some of the best schools turn hall­ways into addi­tional learn­ing spaces, too, by set­ting up areas for stu­dents to work and putting up activ­i­ties and infor­ma­tion. One school I visit, for exam­ple, has a “Word of the Week” posted out­side the library. Stu­dents and vis­i­tors walk­ing by can’t help but see the dis­play and think about the intrigu­ing vocab­u­lary word as they walk by every day.

(As an aside, I was struck as I was search­ing for a pho­to­graph to accom­pany this post that pic­ture after pic­ture showed vacant, ster­ile hall­ways with lit­tle or no dec­o­ra­tion, and in most cases lit­tle or no color at all. It makes me won­der if the instruc­tion going on in those build­ings is sim­i­larly vacant and sterile.)

Hall­ways are what con­nect the dis­parate pieces of a school into a com­mu­nity. Hall­ways are one of the ways that real rela­tion­ships can occur in a school, and the mem­bers of the com­mu­nity need to rec­og­nize their func­tions and importance–as well as their limitations–in order to make the most of them. We can think of hall­ways as sim­ply a way to get to the rest room or the office. Or they can become a place where we join together with our col­leagues to build a net­work that can deal with the chal­lenges con­fronting us in our efforts to make learn­ing happen.

Hm. Sounds just like the “new” 21^st-​​century, Web 2.0 social networks.