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Chapter 1
Creating a Culture of Minimalism in Your Classroom
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The Purpose for Creating a Culture of Minimalism in Your Classroom
The term "culture" can bring to mind a variety of different images or meanings. This can encompass anything from language or food to the arts or family structures. Ultimately, a culture is a shared set of values and practices that are held by a group of people. A culture of minimalism requires members of a group, in this case your classroom, to recognize and work toward making use of currently available resources and no more in order to best support the requirements and expectations of the community. While a minimalist culture in classrooms may seem unconventional, overly innovative, or unrealistic now, this approach is becoming more and more socially acceptable. Rather than superficially attempting to meet students' needs by buying "things," adding more tasks, or creating more paperwork, there is a shift to instead maximize existing resources in the community and create a lifelong practice and lifestyle of appreciation, efficiency, and sustainability.
At this point, we do not need to use the Triple P funnel because the process to establish classroom culture is different from how to declutter the elements of your teaching. However, as we begin unpacking priorities in creating a culture of minimalism in your classroom, and really your teaching life, we can correlate two stages in the cycle. During this time, you are working in the inquiry and investigation phases of the cycle, moving you further on with your investigation.
Priorities in Creating This Culture
When you recognize the purpose of creating a minimalist culture in your classroomâto create a mindset of efficiency and appreciation and practice itâpriorities become clearer and simpler to address. Below, we've highlighted three main priorities to answer why you might wish to develop this mindset within your classroom contexts.
Priority #1: Positive well-being and avoiding burnout
Anyone in education, in any capacity, can attest to the fact that it is exhausting. Research studies about teacher burnout have been consistent in their findings across Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, New Zealand, and South America.
In her article "The Teacher Burnout Epidemic, Part 1 of 2," Jenny Grant Rankin (2016) states that, while teacher workloads are different worldwide, they are at a maximum. In 2014, reports showed that 8 percent of all American teachers were leaving the field each year. Of those leaving, a 2012â2013 teacher survey by the National Center for Education Statistics (Goldring, Taie, & Riddles, 2014) reported more than half said their new profession's workload was significantly lower than when they were working as teachers. In addition to that, a 2019 National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report highlights that teachers are consistently reporting more stress than those in alternative professions. Finally, a resounding 41 percent of teachers leave the profession in their first five years, highlighting a workforce quitting before they have had the opportunity to truly master skills and take their profession to the next level, according to Dr. Jenny Grant Rankin (2016).
Clearly our chosen profession is one in which our well-being and mental health are at risk. These pressures may be coming from a wide range of causes: federal mandates, administration/districts, parent population, accountability standards, or the students themselves. But wherever they may be coming from, we are all feeling it.
Our hope is that through developing a minimalist culture within your work environment, you will be able to reduce the level of exhaustion you feel. Ideally, focusing on your purpose, priorities, and ways to pare down will allow you to have the emotional and intellectual energy to continue in this valuable profession.
Priority #2: Reconceptualizing waste in order to combat waste
When we think about minimalism and waste, we of course consider the extraneous items that clutter our room. We think of what we can get rid of and how to dispose of all those unnecessary items. However, in order to reset our mindset toward a culture of minimalism, we need to expand our thinking around what actually constitutes waste. A broader understanding of waste will help shift the way we approach how we work and function in our working environments, such as the many different facets of waste that can occur: time, emotional, intellectual and psychological (mental), economic, and physical or resource waste. Each day in our work as teachers we could encounter waste in any, or all, of these ways, leaving us feeling stressed, ineffective, and anxious. Consider the following examples:
- Time waste: Planning lessons that require excessive time and preparation.
- Emotional/psychological waste: Taking feedback from administration or parents personally.
- Economic waste: Repurchasing items you already have but have misplaced in the clutter of the classroom.
- Physical waste: Filling every space of the classroom until it no longer functions effectively.
Reconceptualizing waste in this way will allow you to combat waste in a less superficial manner and really build a culture of minimalism in your classroom. When we have extraneous clutter in our lives, be it abstract or physical things, we are overcome with waste. This idea is counterproductive to your priority to prevent burnout. When we focus on the purpose, priority, and paring down process, we can reduce all the different kinds of waste.
Priority #3: Managing waste beyond the four Rs
In Less Stuff, Lindsay Miles (2019) discusses the importance of considering what will happen to our physical clutter when we are done with it. She argues that we need to think sustainably and move beyond just shifting our unwanted clutter to a landfill. Other potential ways to remedy a growing waste concern is to consider reusing, repurposing, repairing, and recycling.
Waste reduction helps create a culture of minimalism and reduce potential burnout. Consider the following questions:
- If we cannot reuse items ourselves, is there someone else who might find a use, whether for its intended or an adapted purpose?
- Is it possible to repair the items if they are not in use due to damage?
- Could the item, or its components, be recycled?
What Are Your Priorities?
Now that we have highlighted both the purpose and priorities of establishing a classroom culture of minimalism, we encourage you to consider your own priorities moving forward. To do this, let's use the urgent/important matrix in Figure 1.1. Plot the following elements on the matrix, and you will quickly establish which are of critical importance for you to take action on at this time.
Figure 1.1. Urgent/Important Matrix
Important
UrgentâHigh priority: Take action immediately
Not so urgentâMedium priority: Make a plan
Not so important
UrgentâMedium priority: Make a plan
Not so urgentâNeither urgent nor important: Eliminate as a priority
Where would you place the following on the matrix?
- Maintenance or restoration of your well-being
- Avoiding burnout
- Minimizing time waste
- Minimizing emotional/psychological waste
- Minimizing economic waste
- Minimizing physical waste
- Sustainably managing waste
What did you discover? Do you urgently need to take action to prevent burnout? Or is economic waste a more important priority for you at this time? Now armed with a definitive vision of where you need to take action, we can begin our discussion about just how to go about creating this culture.
How to Create a Minimalist Classroom Culture
To develop a culture of minimalism in your classroom that is sustainable for you and your...
