Todd, they are just chairs.

There is an ongoing battle just outside my office. It involves persons unknown, possibly the nice cleaning staff or wandering students, and two chairs alongside a small table with a plant, a table tent like thing, and a brochure. Here is the thing – every so often when I arrive to the office, I see the chairs have been placed directly facing the table. Perhaps someone is just tidying things up and organizing things? Putting them in “order” so that things are tucked in.

They look like this. And it drives me crazy.

I know. “Relax Todd!” They are just chairs….

But, but… I had an epiphany about chairs once. When I was being trained to waiting tables I was told to open up the angle of the chair so that the seat, you know, the part you sit on, was visible and just waiting for you to sit on it. You had to move the chair less to sit down.  The message was that I was to do some of the work for the customer by placing the chair in a way that would make it easier to sit down. Like you want to make it look like the chair is just screaming, “Sit on me!”

So nowadays, Todd makes sure all the chairs around him invite people to sit down. That is what they are there for after all… And he is kinda fanatical about it. That may not be a good thing, but anytime I see the chairs tucked in under the table, I move them out a bit in an inviting angle.

I learned a lot about teaching from being a line cook and a waiter. And a bartender. But I tend to see connections between things that sometimes seem pretty silly. I don’t mind. I need silly.

So many subtleties. So many nuanced motions, and things placed in space. How do we “invite?” What small actions can we take to choreograph our learning spaces into more inviting events.

How do we make our classrooms more inviting? Our online class activities? What looks inviting about a discussion forum? How to you place the words or the images in a way that invites people in? As you walk around the class, where do you stand to be inviting? Open? Available?

Is your “welcome to class email” welcoming? In the tone? In the space between the paragraphs? In the amount of them?

So many wonderful things to wonder about. And they all make a difference.