Breakthroughs
Ditch Your Teacher’s Desk!
Veteran educator Nanci Brillant is chair of the English Department at Northeast Middle School in Anne Arundel County. She was a finalist for teacher of the year in Florida, holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction, and is a National Board Certified Teacher. Connect with Nanci on LinkedIn, and @nancibrillant on X and Bluesky.
We have a crisis of student engagement in my school, and in response, I will again “ditch my desk” next year and rethink how I teach. I need to be able to gather deeper data, build student relationships more quickly, and prevent challenging behavior more effectively by being physically closer to students for most of our class time together. When I share this idea, the first response is usually, “I can’t be on my feet all day.” I get that—and to be clear, I do have a small table for the doc camera and laptop when I need to model annotations, for example, because my tech is hard-wired and can’t be moved. I have a stool I can use if I need it, so I’m not saying I will never sit—I’m just saying it’s very effective to ditch the desk and teach from the center of the room instead.
How has this looked in my classroom in the past? When I ditched my desk in the past, I used a wireless clicker ($30, online) that moved my presentation forward, so I didn’t have to continually go back to the tech table. This is critical to being more mobile in the classroom. Second, classroom furniture setup is crucial. I clustered desks in the four corners of my rectangular-shaped room with two small round tables in the middle. My rolling cart ($100, IKEA) was in the center with essential supplies like sticky notes, pens, lesson plans, etc. Next, for this to really work, advanced planning and systems were essential. I color-coded everything so each group had a different color. For example, one group was blue, with blue baskets, folders, binder clips—literally everything—so I could see in an instant where something went. Every corner had hanging expandable vertical folders to manage four daily classes, and in between periods, I could quickly collected finished work from the table’s basket, put the work on my cart, and grabbed the new stack of student work from the wall file. The next class was ready to go in seconds.
How can I collect data, build relationships, and control student movement and behavior from a cart? Using a clipboard with a class roster, I can “walk and talk” among my tables, listen to discourse, and drive instruction. By using symbols (like +/-) by students’ names, I can check off mastery of standards, quickly notating progress. Adding notes on the roster in real time also helps me capture important information, which was helpful in parent conferences so I could say factually that Student A exhibited this behavior 10 times in one week or Student B is struggling with this concept. I can build student relationships easier and faster when I am in their midst, listening, reacting, correcting misconceptions, and guiding learning. I can prevent small conflicts from becoming big ones because I am right there and heard what happened. From my notes on the roster, I can reference something I might have been told previously: “Hey, how’s your mom doing? You said on Monday she was in the hospital,” and help students feel valued and heard.
Working from a cart from the center of the classroom can also help restrict unnecessary student movement. “Need a pencil? Here you go!” “Want a highlighter? Here it is.” When thoughtfully set up, teaching from the middle of the room instead of from a desk crammed in the corner creates a way for me to gather important data, get to know students on a deeper level, proactively react if there is a problem, and continually remind students that they really are the center of my attention.