The Seating Chart
Lately I’ve been thinking about school days, and one thing that crossed
my mind was the seating arrangements. I came up with a question: Were
our friendships determined by where we sat in the classroom?
In many classes, the seating arrangement was simply in alphabetical order. Since most of our school day was spent at our assigned seat, were we more inclined to develop friendships with those who sat nearest us, and furthermore, were friendships more likely to be with people whose last names were alphabetically close to ours? Here were the seating arrangements in my classrooms in each grade:
K – We didn’t have desks. I only remember sitting in the floor, or “on the stage”.
1 – I remember round tables that would seat 4 or 5 people. I don’t remember if we had assigned tables.
2 – Desks were arranged in a square, and we were seated alphabetically. Maybe 7 desks on each side of the square, with the teacher's desk at one of the corners. I remember thinking that this was not a very good arrangement. When my pencil rolled off the front of my desk, it was “inside the square” and the only way to get to it was to crawl under the desk! Poor planning. Back to the main topic, in this seating arrangement, you really could only talk to the people on either side of you. (Hmm, on second thought, maybe the teacher had the right idea after all.)
3 – We were seated in the standard grid pattern. Maybe 4 rows deep from the chalk board, and 7 rows wide. This seating arrangement allowed for the easiest access to potential friends. To use the Brady Bunch analogy, you would be Alice in the center, and you could talk to Mike, Carol, or any of the six kids.
4. Again, the standard grid pattern. Except there was one kid who wasn’t part of the grid. If the whole class was a football team huddled at the 50 yard line, then this one kid was sitting at the goal post in the end zone.
5. The first half of the year, we had something new. We were seated in pairs. This arrangement was similar to the grid pattern, but instead of single desks, we were paired up. I can’t remember if the pairing was alphabetical or not. The second half of the year, I think we reverted to the standard grid.
6. Grid pattern. This was the first year (or, maybe only year) we didn’t have carpeted floors. So any time you moved your chair you heard the grating sound of the chair feet on the floor. Here, I’ll also mention that the grid pattern didn’t always allow for you to make eight new friends. There were those unlucky few who were seated along the sides, or worse, in the corners. If you were in one of the front corners, not only were you limited to only three people in your neighborhood, but you also couldn’t see the chalk board.
7. This is where we started changing classes throughout the day. We had four classes, each with a different arrangement. Class 1 had the pairs arrangement like in 5th grade. Class 2 had the desks grouped in sets of 4, harkening back to the round table situation in 1st grade. Class 3 was some sort of modified grid where the outer desks were turned 90 degrees so that they were facing the unlucky few in the center. In Class 4 I don’t think we had standard desks, but longer tables that each seated two people. The ten or so tables were arranged in a “U” shape, and the teacher’s desk was like the umlaut (the two little dots) over a German “U”. In this setting you only had one person on each side of you, but you also had the benefit (or drawback as the case may be) of staring at the person sitting across from you.
After seventh grade, we can assume we’ve already established friendships, and with our increased mobility we are no longer restricted to making friends with those seated around us. The most common seating order was alphabetical, so did our friends have last names that started with letters close to ours?
My answer is probably not. Even when the desk arrangement stayed the same all year, there was usually that exciting day when the teacher announced a new seating chart. For many, there were hopes that our new seat would be closer to another friend. For others, they already had the perfect seat and didn’t want to change anything. Also, with each subsequent grade we had different people in our class, and with that, a new-found opportunity to meet new people. You could say that each year the deck was shuffled and we started a new card game. And it seemed like in my classes, the Jokers were always Wild.
In many classes, the seating arrangement was simply in alphabetical order. Since most of our school day was spent at our assigned seat, were we more inclined to develop friendships with those who sat nearest us, and furthermore, were friendships more likely to be with people whose last names were alphabetically close to ours? Here were the seating arrangements in my classrooms in each grade:
K – We didn’t have desks. I only remember sitting in the floor, or “on the stage”.
1 – I remember round tables that would seat 4 or 5 people. I don’t remember if we had assigned tables.
2 – Desks were arranged in a square, and we were seated alphabetically. Maybe 7 desks on each side of the square, with the teacher's desk at one of the corners. I remember thinking that this was not a very good arrangement. When my pencil rolled off the front of my desk, it was “inside the square” and the only way to get to it was to crawl under the desk! Poor planning. Back to the main topic, in this seating arrangement, you really could only talk to the people on either side of you. (Hmm, on second thought, maybe the teacher had the right idea after all.)
3 – We were seated in the standard grid pattern. Maybe 4 rows deep from the chalk board, and 7 rows wide. This seating arrangement allowed for the easiest access to potential friends. To use the Brady Bunch analogy, you would be Alice in the center, and you could talk to Mike, Carol, or any of the six kids.
4. Again, the standard grid pattern. Except there was one kid who wasn’t part of the grid. If the whole class was a football team huddled at the 50 yard line, then this one kid was sitting at the goal post in the end zone.
5. The first half of the year, we had something new. We were seated in pairs. This arrangement was similar to the grid pattern, but instead of single desks, we were paired up. I can’t remember if the pairing was alphabetical or not. The second half of the year, I think we reverted to the standard grid.
6. Grid pattern. This was the first year (or, maybe only year) we didn’t have carpeted floors. So any time you moved your chair you heard the grating sound of the chair feet on the floor. Here, I’ll also mention that the grid pattern didn’t always allow for you to make eight new friends. There were those unlucky few who were seated along the sides, or worse, in the corners. If you were in one of the front corners, not only were you limited to only three people in your neighborhood, but you also couldn’t see the chalk board.
7. This is where we started changing classes throughout the day. We had four classes, each with a different arrangement. Class 1 had the pairs arrangement like in 5th grade. Class 2 had the desks grouped in sets of 4, harkening back to the round table situation in 1st grade. Class 3 was some sort of modified grid where the outer desks were turned 90 degrees so that they were facing the unlucky few in the center. In Class 4 I don’t think we had standard desks, but longer tables that each seated two people. The ten or so tables were arranged in a “U” shape, and the teacher’s desk was like the umlaut (the two little dots) over a German “U”. In this setting you only had one person on each side of you, but you also had the benefit (or drawback as the case may be) of staring at the person sitting across from you.
After seventh grade, we can assume we’ve already established friendships, and with our increased mobility we are no longer restricted to making friends with those seated around us. The most common seating order was alphabetical, so did our friends have last names that started with letters close to ours?
My answer is probably not. Even when the desk arrangement stayed the same all year, there was usually that exciting day when the teacher announced a new seating chart. For many, there were hopes that our new seat would be closer to another friend. For others, they already had the perfect seat and didn’t want to change anything. Also, with each subsequent grade we had different people in our class, and with that, a new-found opportunity to meet new people. You could say that each year the deck was shuffled and we started a new card game. And it seemed like in my classes, the Jokers were always Wild.
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