By HCISD STAFF
Harlingen CISD students from kindergarten to second grade will have modernized furniture in their classrooms beginning next school year to further encourage and develop lifelong learners.
The furniture creates a welcoming environment while ensuring every corner of the classroom is a positive learning space for students to reach their full potentials. Promoting creativity while meeting the individual needs of Harlingen CISD remained a focal point in the selection of new tables, teacher desks, and shelves. “A big focus of that modernized classroom is to really meet the learning needs of our kids and to create collaborative learning spaces,” said HCISD Administrator for Organization Development Veronica Kortan. “The traditional big bulky desks will be a thing of the past.”
Instead of desks, kinder through second grade students will learn and grow their minds while seated around tables. There will also be alternative seating to give students options to be matched with a seat that best fits their energy levels conducive to positive learning environments. Harlingen CISD alreadymodernized third through fifth grade classrooms, and the planned upgrades are another step in the positive transformation.
“There’s something to be said for kids when they come in and their whole classroom environment is updated and it’s new,” Kortan said. “It’s just a different kind of feel in those classrooms.”
The tables promote small group instruction and teacher interaction. All the tables in the elementary classrooms will have whiteboard tops as well.
Teachers will be provided with strategies to best utilize their classroom furniture to meet the needs of their particular group of students each school year.
Along with Harlingen CISD’s new Pre-K for all program as well as its expanded and refined early literacy program, the new furniture is another mechanism to drive and encourage lifelong learners.
HCISD acquired the new, modernized furniture through the voterapproved tax ratification
election. Focus groups and educators played an imperative role in the selection of the classroom equipment.
The new furniture will be placed inside each elementary school classroom beginning this summer.
