Learning can happen anywhere — in a classroom, in a park, on a field trip or at a museum. But, the reality is that space matters.

I had a classroom last year, and while it was shared with my math counterpart, it was large and just for us. We taught lessons, organized student materials and met with families in this space. The other two special education teachers at my school also shared a classroom.

But when we returned this fall, we were told that we no longer had classrooms — they were needed elsewhere. This affected some of us more than others. Our special education team includes six teachers and four paraprofessionals, and we serve our students through a combination of models. We offer self-contained and behavioral support classes for students with significant exceptionalities, which some of us teach in designated classrooms that have remained intact. We also provide push-in and pull-out services for our students with mild to moderate learning needs, meaning that we teach them in a general education setting as well as pulling them out into a separate setting, which, this year, has become the hallway.

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