On occasion, students are given permission to choose their new seats in a class. Students usually take advantage of their freedom and choose seats as far from the teacher’s view as possible. This creates the generalization about some areas in the classroom—for example, where the intelligent people sit, where the people who could not care less sit, and where the class clown sits. These areas are given unofficial names: the smart corner, the funny corner, the clueless corner, and even the failing corner.
Classrooms are a space for learning, where students may openly ask questions or make mistakes. Although it is up to the student whether they pay attention in class or not, teacher try to create an environment that is optimal for learning. To diminish the number of distractions, some teachers have arranged their classes using seating charts. However, some situations seem to be inevitable—especially when there is no assigned seating.
When there is no seating chart, students flock to the places that they believe are the best to sit in. According to the Professional Learning Board (pLB), a student’s self-allotted seat in a classroom symbolizes their academic character or work ethic. Students who excel in their classes tend to sit towards the front of the room, because they do not want to miss out on any information given by the teacher. On the other hand, underachieving students tend to sit near windows and doors because they provide distractions from the long, boring classes and lectures. Students often assume that teachers cannot see everything; however, some observations teachers make may shock students.
Ms. Loi, a math teacher for Alegbra I and II students, believes there is such thing as a “failing corner”. While in graduate school, her professor had mentioned a failure corner in the classroom. “I was taught that students who have predetermined themselves to fail a particular class will subconsciously choose to sit in the back left corner of the room,” she explained. Curious to see the extent of this, Ms. Loi keeps this theory in mind when she observes her classroom. Unsurprisingly, she has found that students who are generally unenthusiastic and do not care to participate in her class tend to be attracted to the left side of the room.
During the beginning of the school year, Ms. Loi usually mentions the most notable things she has taken from the year before, to make sure that her classes will not make the same mistakes. “I make my students aware of the preconceptions of the failure corner to try to combat the amount of students that sit in that area,” she says. To prevent her students from developing a mindset based on self-doubt that could lead them easily give up, she also intentionally seats them away from the left side of the classroom.
Though they might not be true in all cases, there are many stereotypes about where students sit and how it reflects their academic ability. Assigned seating charts are an excellent method to prevent students from sitting in the predeemed “bad seats”. However, for the teachers who do not have seating charts, it is up to the students where they seat themselves. It is important to remember that sitting in the “failing corner” does not necessarily make the students are underachievers. If we are ever in the “failing corner”, as students, we need to use this motivation to try harder in hopes of eliminating the corner altogether.
