Rethinking Classroom Seating With Caves, Campfires, and Watering Holes

With classroom chock full of 32 students, English language arts teacher Tyler Rablin was looking for a seating arrangement that could accommodate different modes of teaching and learning: individual work, small group collaboration, and whole-class instruction. Loosely adapting the concept of caves, campfires, and watering holes (from a 1996 essay by educational futurist and author David Thornburg on learning environments) for seating, Rablin experimented with students moving their desks and chairs in order to transition from one mode to another, but found that it simply took too long—not to mention it was highly disruptive. 

After much experimentation, he landed on an unusual but effective set up. He started by making inner and outer horseshoes out of the desks, and faced both toward the back and side walls of the classroom. He finished the design with a few longer tables in the center. Although it was unusual, the layout allowed students to transition from solo work (the cave model) to small group work (campfires) to whole-class instruction (watering holes) by only moving themselves and their chairs, saving time and chaos along the way. 

An added and unexpected bonus? When students were working in cave mode (now facing the outer walls), Rablin could see their screens, allowing him to easily identify when students were stuck or off-task. 

The design initially caught his administration off guard. Rablin laughs, remembering the moment they came into his classroom for an evaluation. “They froze in the doorway, and I realized I had some explaining to do as to why students were all facing the wall.” But he continues, “When it comes to classroom design, one of the biggest things that I run into is that I limit myself with the expectations of how I’ve always done things in the classroom. Choosing to face my desks outward towards the back of the room and the sides was highly unconventional, but thinking outside the bounds of what we expect or what is normal can sometimes have huge advantages in the classroom.”

Read more about Rablin’s caves, campfires, and watering holes seating system in the article he wrote for Edutopia, “An Unconventional Seating Plan Designed to Benefit Focus and Learning.”