9. SeatingPlan.com

https://www.seatingplan.com?referral_code=118108126208585704812

This episode explains SeedingPlan.com and why it's so powerful in a seminary class. 

email: seminaryhelper@gmail.com

Please leave a rating and review and share with all your fellow seminary teachers. 

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SeatingPlan.com. My name is John Merrill Kirkman. Welcome to the Seminary Teacher Helper podcast. Today, I wanna share one of my favorite tools for seminary teachers or honestly, any teacher who wants to build better classroom connection, participation, and culture. It's called SeatingPlan.com. And no, this isn't sponsored. I just genuinely love this tool because it has made seating charts so much easier and so much more effective. A lot of us know seating charts matter, but actually creating them, that can feel exhausting. You've got students constantly changing seats, new students showing up, names to memorize, friend groups to balance, and sometimes you just want to survive the first five minutes of class. The setup is surprisingly simple. First, you import your class roster. You can paste names from WISE and then just copy and paste on the chart in SeatingPlan.com. Then you create your classroom layout by dragging and resizing desks to match your actual room. After that, you simply assign students seats. And it's visually really clean and easy to use. You can literally map out your classroom exactly how it looks in real life. One thing I really appreciate and love is how fast it is to rearrange students. Sometimes as a teacher, we hesitate to adjust seating charts because it feels like too much work. But with this program, you can make changes in seconds. And honestly, seating charts are about way more than classroom management. One of the biggest reasons I believe in thoughtful seating charts comes from my own life. Back when I was in early morning seminary, I sat basically by the same friend all year long. He was awesome. We had a blast, but looking back, I missed opportunities to connect with a lot of other incredible people in the class. People who probably would have strengthened my life, my faith, and at a time when I was struggling to make friends, perhaps I could have made some new friends and some better friends. Sometimes students need help expanding their circle, and that's what we can do with the seating chart. My previous two, episodes talk more and grow into more depth about this, but a seating chart can help quiet students feel included. It can help students make new friends. It can help prevent isolation. It can help class discussions become more balanced and uplifting. And sometimes the right seat next to the right person can quietly change someone's entire experience in your class. And the best part, it's free for one class. And so if you're an early morning seminary teacher and you got one class, that's all you need, it's free. If you're a full-time teacher and you have more classes, it's two fifty a month, and if you click the link in the below, you save, I think it's ten or fifteen percent. So if you've never tried using the intentional seating charts or if you've tried the sticky notes, paper maps, and constantly rewriting things by hand, I really encourage you to check it out. Explore it yourself. Again, the site seatingplan.com. Thanks for listening. Keep doing the small things that help students feel seen, connected, and loved. Thanks for joining us on today's episode of Seminary Teacher Helper. Be sure to check in for more. Have a great day. And remember, you're awesome!