In my experience, the whole seating situation largely depended on what each teacher decided for their room! When we had single desks that were typically kept separate, we would drag them closer for group work.
This exactly! I actually had a room in high school where it was a big square of desks where we all faced each other! But I also had rooms with tables-two at a table, and then regular desks that were do uncomfortable when the chair and desk was connected!
i remember whenever we walked into the classroom and the desks were pushed together in a U shape everyone would skip because no one wanted to do discussion tables it was hilarious
Actually, in America seating arrangements also depend on the teacher! In the majority of my classrooms, our desks are connected, but even if they aren't, during group-work we are allowed to scoot them close together. In elementary school, we always sat in groups, no lone desks.
As someone who’s currently going to school in Germany, I can totally relate, the whole seating situation is definitely something that is more American. We usually sit in either u shapes or rectangles as well, sometimes even straight up lines. The whole locker thing is also something that seems really unknown to me, I usually have to carry my stuff around with me the whole day lmao. And I can definitely relate to the whole ugly school thing. I mean I can’t talk for all schools in Germany but our school was once declared the ugliest school in my state so…yeah fun to go to 💀
My school (in Germany too) actually had lockers. But one locker you see in American school were four seperate lockers and they were only for 5th and 6th graders 🤷♀
In Russia (in big cities) we also don't have lockers, but we do have a coat (?) section where you leave your jacket/coat/etc and shoes during the day. You must take off outdoorsy shoes and put on some clean ones (usually sneakers), especially in winter, since it will get noticably messy if you walk around leaving puddles of dirty melting snow everywhere lol Of course, noone likes transporting a bag of shoes every day from home to school and then back, so when the weather is okay (warm and dry) you can get away with not changing your shoes. There's also an option of keeping your indoorsy pair of shoes at school at all times, but there's always a possibility of it being stolen 😅 Having lockers wouldn't hurt... lol
this is exactly how it's like in british schools. We have lockers but they're tiny and so irrelevant - always in some random corridor and NO ONE uses them. It's just not a thing over here to use lockers. We just carry our stuff cuz we're not lazy fucks
Australia has the “group” / rows of tables or at least groups of two. But we definitely didn’t have singular desks. When I went to school in Japan it was singular desks though.
@@crvptydgaming8286 "But that was in QLD, so who knows" is somehow such a quintessentially Australian sentiment. I grew up mainly in VIC and NSW but was born in QLD and every time I mention where I was born VIC and NSW people freak out as if they have to re-evaluate their entire idea of me as a human being lol
Yeah, I think it's generally how it is in this build; groups of tables laid out. At the public primary school and public high schools I went to it was like two-seater or three-seater tables that would be arranged into rows or a pattern around the room, like some classrooms were set up so the tables made a big U-shape. Sometimes the teacher would ask us to move them about, especially because sometimes another class had moved them into a bizarre shape or the kids had been throwing chairs at each other again. I remember scrambling to get the seat on the end of the row/table so that I could have a 50% less painful lesson with only one person next to me (me-and-plumbella-shaking-hands-over-undiagnosed-autism-meme insert here). I did go to a private primary school for a bit though, and in some classrooms they did have these slanted old wooden single standing desks that had a hinge on the top so you could store all your pencils/books etc inside. I was obsessed with those because they made me feel like I was in Harry Potter (me-and-plumbella-shaking-hands-over-harry-potter-based-escapism-in-school-meme insert here).
@@dirkjenkins1253 QLD is a weird place, we don't talk about it lmao. I grew up there but moved to SA so I get it. My husband jokes and calls me a 'banana lander' to tease me 😅
9:53 Ahhh yes. The "temporary blocks" that ended up staying 25 years after you'd left the school. For me, it was a 'block' for languages (4 rooms for French & German) and another 'block' for English. Except that one was for the bottom sets (6, 7, and 8?) They were the only buildings to not have toilets, which was such a pain if you had to go. (My school looked like a square layout with a bunch of bungalows)
those blocks give me the same vibes as when one of my schools decided to transfer non kindergarten kids into a factory building they had temporary walls around to create a school layout but never actually replaced those walls with anything so the school looks like a blocky hellscape LMAO
So many memories! In primary school we had portacabins on the sports field (tarmac field, of course) and then in high school it was our languages block in the yard! I wonder if they’re still there…
in my experience americans call it "cutting class"/"skipping class"/"ditching class" this one is more antiquated but ppl will also call it "playing hooky"
I grew up in the uk and then my family moved to australia 2 years after starting highshool, imagine a shit load of mobile buildings linked with outdoor concrete pathways.. thats australian public schools. It was the weirdest experience, getting swooped by angry birds as you walked/ran to your next class
Mate the contrast between the crumbling old derelict portable buildings and the maybe two modern buildings only there because of random government funding just added to the charm!
Gotta love magpie season 🤙 They put signs out the front of one of schools that I went to because the walk from the front gate to the office/admin (a little bit of a walk) was where a heap liked to nest
Oh yeah, I'd say the main difference between Australian schools and the American/British ones is that everything is just a lot more outdoors... at my school we didn't really have lockers as such, we usually kept our bags outside on the portracks. There were little lockers in our homeroom classes but they were really inconvenient to get to once you started moving around for the day We had school houses as well and a system of points to win the school cup. About the only thing that was ever relevant for earning points was winning sports carnivals though.... no love for the arts or sciences
We had single desks at my school in all but the science labs. When we did group stuff they would give us a few minutes to shift our desks together. Weirdly less chaotic than it sounds though.
Interesting, we just had larger desks for 2 or 3 students. You did the labs with whoever was at your table, they were nice and big too wish all the classes were like that...
Our "temporary" mobile classroom was known as "the shed" And then we had a massive "temporary" block of classrooms, that was baltic in the winter, and roasting in the summer, and the walls and floors were so thin that if someone sneezed, the entire building would vibrate
Also, fun fact. My dad taught at that secondary school for over 25 years, and those "temporary" classrooms were there when he arrived, and only got taken down the year he left (and only because they were rebuilding the entire school) Before it was knocked down, it was the strangest patchwork school of random additions from different eras in completely different architectural styles and materials. It was an absolute maze to get around in year 7 even with the map
We had temp classrooms and one day we turned up and they were gone, they got rid but forgot to move us to a different classroom so we had to sit down on the concrete floor where the classroom was, and we did this for weeks🤣
Our temps were the same, 1940s-2009 RIP. My form room was one and we realised if you lobbed water bottles vertically up the lids would hole punch the ceiling... And then we had to move forms coz of asbestos. The memories 😍
This looks exactly like my highschool, except my high school exterior was designed to look like a train from a birds-eye view. And they were weirdly proud of it as well. From the ground, though, it just looked like any other depressing, concrete tory monolith.
You can't just come in here saying stuff like "my high school exterior was designed to look like a train" like that's remotely normal, and not give a bit more info so we can Google and get a look at this weirdness...
@@Fireberries There was a train station in the town and I guess they thought that was special. There was also an open septic mains running along the bottom end of the sports field, and they had to build a new primary school on the front sports field because the old primary school started sinking into the ground. 70s and 80s UK infrastructure really is a different breed.
If I was in charge of a school that looked like a train from a birds eye view I'd never shut up about it. That's art camouflaged into the real world baby
As an American highschool student, to the question about desks is that they're usually singular and the teachers push some of the desks together (also we do have group work we just move our chairs) if we don't have singular desks we have long tables and we also push them together sometimes.(and we still move our chairs depending on where our partner is)
American teacher here! The seating arrangement in most cases is entirely up to the teacher. While the individual/separate are traditional, they are no longer encouraged as we are heavily encouraged to give group work. If a teacher does keep desks in rows, they normally have students move their desks into groups then move back later.
Okay I am living for all of these different Simmers recreating the schools of THEIR childhood. It's so interesting seeing things that are universal to the shcooling experience contrasted with all of the quirky little details that make each unique. idk, I just love it
As someone who grew up in sweden; having seperated seating is really foreign to me. We either sat like 3-8 in a line or in like a rounded group of 4-6. Never once have I had to sit seperated.
As an American I never really sat separated for most of my classes, the desks are usually put together in rows or tables, or you scoot them for group work
I had classes that were separate desks and seated together at tables. My kids school doesn't have a single classroom with separate desks. So it's not strange here but not the rule either.
The only time I’ve ever sat alone at a single desk was when I had to take end of year exams in high school in New Zealand. It would be so weird sitting in a classroom with no one sitting next to you and everyone just spread evenly across the room. It would be sad not being able to sit next to your friends.
American here, in my school it really depended on the teacher how the desks were set up. There were definitely single desk set ups, especially when we had a test, but there was also a large amount of rooms that had group setups. And sometimes there were wild card setups like my European history teacher liked to set up our desks in an almost college seminar formation.
Love the feeling of the portacabins that are meant to be temporary but have been there for twenty years. Certainly some trauma responses - and I went to private school, and it was still like this.
Australian here - we had single desks but they were very rarely positioned by themselves unless we were doing tests or something. The teachers would arrange them however they liked, which was very jarring when you'd come back after a term break and they were in a completely new formation. Honestly, the most memorable thing about the desks was being one of 20+ kids in close proximity trying to move the chairs on top of them at the end of the day so it was easier for the cleaners to vacuum. As an aside, loved seeing the different blocks and mobiles (we call them demountables in Aus) - maybe this is just cause I went to a public school in the sticks, but we basically never had just one big building for high school like the stereotypical American ones (even the posh schools built themselves more like uni campuses). There was always one super old building dating from when the school first opened, the dedicated blocks like the library, office and hall and then just constant additions of little buildings and demountables here and there as the school grew over the years. Our school in particular had a fun little tradition of 'which block will be off limits next?' as kids kept punching holes in the walls and uncovering asbestos, thus closing the room/ block for the foreseeable future...
As an American who literally went to 5 different high schools (yes high schools - not including the multiple middle schools I went to) - not all American high schools are the same and do not bear any resemblance to the typical “American high school.” At least that’s my experience. 🤷🏻♀️
yep, every high school i've ever seen or been into in the US varies wildly from the last. mainly based off of how bougie (or not) the neighborhood it's located in is!
Yeah the architecture of the schools I went to depended on if they were built during segregation or not, and even then, on whether they were a black-only or white-only school.
were your schools all really into sports like football games in the evening and cheerleaders? Also are they always the popular ones or are they just popular in the movies lol? i always wanted to go to an American high school cause i thought it would be like movies
@@carmen420 it prob depends on where you live. I live in the country so sports, esp football was HUGE. but it also depends on what the students at the school are good at, for instance if the football team sucks but they have a wrestling team who wins lots of games, that school will be all about wrestling. The school I went to wasn't as "clique-y" as they make it out to be in the movies, but my school was also incredibly small. Like movies make out ppl to be "band geeks" however there were a lot of popular students in band at my school, there were some popular people and jocks in the drama club. However, the emo/scene kids and the jocks DID get into a fight in the football stands at a game once so that was interesting.
i used to go to school in japan, and they have the same single desks as in america, and i actually thought it was quite convenient for group work cos you just quickly push your desks together with a few people or if its pair work you could just push your desk together with the person next to you
Oh Jesse. I'm so sorry to hear about ya grandad. Yet at least your laughing. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine. This school definitely looks far different from the highschools I've been in here in the U.S.
I’m italian and here in Italy usually we have two seat desks in the classroom (so two people per desk) for pretty much all grades of school (except for kindergarten where we had big round desks). Some schools have “lab desks” that are for 3 people. In my high school for a couple of years we also had single desks that where kept separated but we used to put them together for group/duos works
In my experience going to school in America, a lot of the times we had separate desks. The only times we would really sit together would be in lab for science. We basically had a long table with barstools for that set up.
im american: for group work we would just push our desks together lol. single desks i think are mainly used for science, math so people dont cheat off one another on tests. in my experience, more social sciences, history, english, etc. was where we sat in groups. so interesting hearing about how schools are organized around the world! so sorry for your loss babe, this was a great video
That’s so intriguing!! I’m in Canada and my hs had individual desks in most literature classes, double desks (like a table in the sims) were in science and art rooms, math and social sciences were individual desks pushed together into groups of 4-5, and history was individual desks in a U shape... so weird for no reason lol
Not all desks in American school are made for one student. In my school teachers could sometimes request whether they wanted single desks or tables but sometimes they didn’t get to choose or would get crappier ones because they chose. When you have to do group work at single desks you usually get up and move some of your stuff tina desk near your group or sometimes you just move the desks around to be closer. Then when the bell rings and class is over you all awkwardly rearrange the desks. Some teachers who really like assigning group work would request big tables and arrange them in a circle or half circle to make people talk together, and in most science rooms there were two person tables where you sit next to your assigned lab partner.
Now this is a school I can relate to. The greenhouse windows! The hall with the stage for assemblies! The “temporary” buildings that were used for decades! The fact that everything is made of lots of different blocks cobbled together somehow into a school instead of a nice attractive single building too. Almost makes me miss my secondary school (which has since been knocked down and replaced by houses… ah Britain)
In Brazil the desks are separated as well to "minimize distractions and parallel conversations", so when there's a group or duo project you have to drag your desk and chair close to your group lol. We only have "glued desks" in kindergarten and sometimes elementary school.
I think it also depends on the school. I did high school in 2 diff schools and one of them had tables together where 2 people would sit. The other one was individual tables as usual
Also middle school and high school are often in the same building, if is a private school (and big enough) it has elementary school, middle school and high school in the same building too 💀💀; and even so, people from different grades don't usually interact (like, 1st grade and 2nd grade having classes together, that's impossible here). Foda que a experiência de uma escola pública pra uma escola particular tbm muda muito, além dos diferentes estados.
My high school was one of those modern 2010’s schools that looked really nice from the outside with lots of natural light but the inside was made of white ciderblocks and grey plastic flouring that always looked dirty no matter what also uncomfortably bright paint on one wall of each classroom which. I think they were trying to go for modern and clean looking but they built it cheap I assume
Same here, my art teacher in particular would always complain about the architecture of my school and how they built the art room bad cause of the way the light sources make drawing from life particularly annoying.
In American high school (well at least mine) we never touched our lockers... Our school was too big and there wasnt enough time in between classes to go back in forth so we just ended up carrying our heavy ass backpacks around all day.
They removed all lockers from Campus my Sophomore year to "reduce drugs & weapons". Not that anyone could use them, as you said, too large with no time.
Yeah, my HS was a campus and after too many people were late to class due to lockers being far away, they just removed all lockers from the school. 😅 So we didn't have to carry all our books around we did get a class set and a home set, though.
Hey, I am from Namibia, and my school was a private school from grades 00 - 12, with a lot of British influence but a little American influence as well. it was split into three segments: lower primary (grade 00-3), upper primary (grade 4-6), and high school (grade 7-12). The sitting situation where typically in pairs or groups of 4 for primary and in high school it largely depended on the teacher. We did not have a gym hall/venue and did PE on the school's field and sports court, and also did not have a cafeteria but two tuck shops, one at the playground for the lower primary side and the other at the highschool drop off/sitting area.
For group work, the single desks are very light and can very easily be moved, so we'd just quickly and easily rearrange our rooms on the fly depending on needs. Very flexible. For very early grades, American schools may use large table setups, or pods of single desks put up against eachother. I'm almost 40 and moved around a lot as a kid and saw a lot of different ways teachers set up their classrooms. I had some elementary teachers who had rigid little rows of separate desks, and others who put desks together into pods or used a table. My 4th grade teacher kept all his desks in a U shape. And yeah, "temporary" classrooms which become permanent while continuing to be heating/cooling nightmares without good restroom access are a real problem at American schools, too.
One of my favorite things about this pack so far is seeing all the different types of schools from across the world as you Simmers build them for us. I grew up in the Midwestern United States and now I'm raising my daughter in the Pacific Northwestern US and the differences in schools just between the two regions here are wild. I'm also an educator now (though I teach teachers) so this is giving me interesting insight into how things are done elsewhere.
what differences are there between them 2 places? lol i always assumed that high schools would be like in the movies but I've heard they're way different
@@carmen420 Well, in warmer climates in the US (such as southern California) a lot of schools are open to the outdoors and the doors to the classrooms lead out into the outdoor common areas (think Princess Diaries and Veronica Mars as examples). Up here in the Northwest, we have lots of what Jesse referred to as "moblies" in this video but we call them "portables" over here. Those pop up when we run out of space in the buildings. Back in the Midwest everything had to be inside because the climate is a lot colder than it is on the West Coast. You'll find lots of schools like the default one in the new pack--older buildings in bigger cities. Sometimes if communities are wealthy and people vote to improve things, you may see some modern builds. My high school, for example, was just recently updated in 2015 (I graduated in 07) with a new auditorium and commons area. In bigger cities and lower-income communities, things are awful. In smaller, suburban, wealthier communities things can be pretty advanced and high tech. I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but our schools depend on local communities for tax dollars to pay for things. So if a community is not well-off, their schools are generally terribly equipped, sometimes with mold and asbestos issues, leaky roofs, outdated, dilapidated textbooks etc... That's pretty much universal in the US as far as school buildings go.
Yes, I’m so excited for when the pack comes out and lots of people have access to it and everyone builds high schools from their own country. It will be so cool to see all the different schools! I’m from New Zealand and I’m personally excited to try build a typical NZ school. I hope to see lots of different schools from different countries on the gallery, it would be so fun to look at them.
I live in Spain, and In my school we had single desks, but up until 7th grade we would push the desks together if we sat in pairs (the teacher assigned the pairs at the beginning of year, and could separate all the desks/change pairs depending on how things went). So it kinds varied
Oh the nostalgia is strong with this one, the dinner hall was also the assembly hall that was also where anything else happened like parents eve etc. the seating arrangement tended to change depending on if the teacher was on one, you either sat with mates or it was designated boy girl boy girl. Oh you smashed this one for sure 💜
I’m from middle America and in elementary school our gym was our lunch room and auditorium and housed any special events like the science fair or Kansas living history day.
From what I remember when I went to school my first 4 years in Russia, it's double desks all evenly spaced apart, facing the teacher.. So you always had a desk neighbor. You also go to all of your classes with your same class group, so by the time you graduate, they're basically your family (whether you like em or not) The school I went to is a 4 or 5 story building and all the grades go there - elementary age kids on floor 2 and middle and high school age kids on higher floors. Though we had like one class, which was English, on the 3rd floor. First floor was these big metal cages for each class's stuff - like a communal locker for each class, cafeteria, a couple of specialty classes, like shop, and a connecter hallway to the art, gym, and auditorium part of the school. I believe in bigger cities they do separate elementary and other levels of schooling. Not sure though. In the states, I don't really remember what the setup was in elementary school..I think it was multiple people to a desk? But I could be wrong.. Single story, quite a small building. But starting in middle school the separation began, where it was single desks. Don't really remember much group anything, but you just kinda figured it out when you got group work - either go sit at someone else's desk to be closer to the people in your group, if they weren't sat next to you, or work outside of class, like at the library or something. Also, all of the classes were with different groups - sometimes you had your friend in a couple of your classes, sometimes not at all. Never had a class group you permanently belong to. Just changing up groups constantly all over the place. My Jr high (middle school but started at 7th grade and went up to 9th) was a single story building. High school was a two story building that looks like a prison from the outside (pale yellow blocky building with tiny horizontal windows along like hip level when inside the classroom) with a couple of trailers outside it for some of the classes, and apparently a whole observatory, that I'd never actually been to. This is all making me realize it's been a while since I graduated school. I'm actually happy about this because I never really enjoyed that experience. 😄
I think mostly we call it 'ditching' but older people sometimes refer to it as 'playing hooky'. (of course accounting for regional dialects! I am in the southwestern US)
The mobiles, the houses, the separate buildings for things… this is so massively different from my high school. Now I have to spend the next however many hours of my life rebuilding my school. The trauma I’m about to relive..
Feeling the dystopian vibes. Love it. Here in Australia we had a different style of big concrete and brick boxes. Lots of durable materials that can't burn easy. We had these long benches every where that we'd sit at outside during lunch and recess.
American group work has everyone drag their desks across the room and make terrible noise or everyone just gathers around one person's desk (I'm physically disabled and couldn't move around much so everyone knew they had to come to me for group work). In elementary school, the individual desks are usually kind of pushed together to form groups of 3 or 4 desks.
I’m American but almost never had single desks until college tbh! Almost always in group tables like you said, tho most often the tables are multiple smaller tables together. I did have a few teachers that did single desks arranged in various ways. In college it’s very common to have single desks and we just move around for group work. America is a big place and most of these things will vary a lot even within one town’s public schools. Also, many schools have detention which I think is the same as the isolation rooms at least in theory :)
It’s so weird to me to see so many buildings where you have to walk outside to go from class to class. I’m from Canada and my primary and high school had 2 big buildings that had an inside bridge/corridor so you could access them without having to go outside. Also for the desks situation, it really depended on your teacher’s preference. I had the single desks in 4 single rows, islands of around 5 or 6 desks pushed together and I also had all the desks lined up together to form a big U shape around the walls of the classroom. But in high school, most of the time it was the single desk rows. It’s funny to see what feels normal to us be very weird to someone else 😛
My school (in Scotland) had a corridor between the towerblock and the courtblock buildings but it was the admin corridor and only seniors, S5/6, were allowed to use it while the S1-4s went outside to get between them.
I honestly can't wait to buy this pack just to build my school. It's a total mix of styles, from like some super old detailed four story building to a random concrete block and a couple of benches outside haha
Ain't that the way. My school was originally built in the Victorian era and its like all red brick and ✨️aesthetic✨️. And then the Tories and Thatcher made half of it be sold so now we have a 1970s science block just thrown on and a portable classroom on the courtyard. It's great. I'm so looking forward to building it. 😅
Broke: watching Heartstopper for the cute gay love story and beautiful representation Woke: watching Heartstopper because it perfectly represents what it's like at a British secondary school 😂
I went to high school in Jamaica we had separated desks just as the pack and for group work we would just move our desks together they weren't bolted to the ground.
In my schools in America we mostly had single desks in every class except science classes, because they involved a lot of group work. Every teacher has their choice of how to lay out the desks (pushing the single desks together into groups or just laying them out in specific ways in the class) and we usually push the desks together to do group work or just stand around.
HOUSE POINTS!!! someone finally remembers those, in Wales we would have an Eistedfodd yearly (poetry, writing competitions etc.) and the 3 houses in our year would win points based on who won the competitions which would THEN lead to an ultimate winner, god i miss it cause my house did infact win xx
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that decided to recreate their own highschool with the upcoming pack. I'm mexican and I attended a private catholic highschool not bc I'm religious but because it's one of the best in terms of education. And the building was so freaking hard to build in the sims, it has a lot of lvls and i did my best using platforms to try and recreate that and it also made me question the layout of my highschool specially the teacher's room, the principal's and the secretary's all connected, but had fun and I can't wait for the expansion to be launched and be able to replay my highschool days, cause honestly they were the peak of stability in my life everything after that has been a rollercoaster. Loved getting to know about british schools and your experience :D
I work in a secondary school in London, I can confirm: this is what they look like. The one I'm teaching at has the exact same style, especially those green chairs and tables are on point.
i cut classes a lot in senior year just bc seniors were given an open campus (seniors could leave during a free period and for lunch) and i felt as though a lot of my classes were useless. also it was really easy to get excused from class, you could call the front office and pretend to be a parent and call yourself out for a dentist appointment when you were really getting boba, it was great.
Yes there’s a ‘temporary’ block with Geography and History in my secondary school that has bendy walls and rats constantly dieing under it! For some reason everything was blue too, chairs, floors, carpets, a random wall or two and those plasticky blinds that always get stuck. The American lockers always seem so great as you get a whole strip to yourself, here in England there are usually strips with about 4 smaller lockers per vertical row and woe betide you if you got the bottom locker (as I did D:)
feeling ya girl. Struggeling with borderline and even though my doctors told me to just drug me down and stop working. I refused. Working hard, a high manager now at a big brand. But still every night crying, laughing, coping with being me. Love seeing you still record and putting yourself out there, while struggeling. So much respect! 🙌🏼
its so funny that they're called mobiles in the UK, they're called portables in the us. both words based on the buildings being movable despite the buildings literally never moving lmao
We used to have these tiny blue shipping crate things outside of our student services/ nurse office are where you go when you had a panic attack, one of the teachers reversed a van into one I was in once
Love seeing the similarities to Aus high school. Always double desks, always with the transportables. Our isolation was called the “withdrawal” room. The amount of times I got sent there just to get some peace 😌
Aussie schools are, generally, a lot of outdoor space cause we have the climate for it. We don't have indoor eating areas, you sit outside at benchs/tables/on the ground and our tuckshop/canteen is generally a building with some service windows and line guides out the front. Pretty much every subject has their own building unless its a multilevel building but none of them are connected, you'll just have undercover walkways between them. Our halls are multipurpose, generally no bleachers, it might have a stage and we have assemblies there (sitting on the floor) but its mainly for sport and sometimes the performing arts. We will have a dedicated library building as well, generally some of the nicest spaces on campus. As for seating arrangements, it really depends on the teacher, some like horizontal lines, some like pairs, some like groups, some like u shapes, some like curved amphitheatre type arrangements, some like aeroplane style arrangements. But all the teachers who use that room have to agree on an arrangement. Staffrooms differ, some are really nice with loads of windows and a nice view and others are like little dungeons.
In Poland we have desks for two students placed usually in three rows. If we do the group work we're grouped in two-desks in the same row - students from more front desk just turn around and face the pair behind them. Or we just move around the room with or without our chairs.
As for the lockers, many schools started to introduce them when I was finishing education in both middle and high school. Before that we had those big spaces in the basement to hang clothes in (coats in winter etc) and they weren't locked, so honestly anyone could enter those. Each class (because classes are fixed here and we're the same group of students throughout all the years at specific school) had its own dressing room. When I was in middle school I got tired of carrying 15kg of books every day so I put a box with my name in my class' basement space and just left some there. You could say I started a trend because soon after my classmates started doing the same and other classes followed suit too. But then they filled those spaces with lockers and we had to buy locks and put our many things in those tiny spaces and everything got bad after that so. Fuck lockers I guess. Had to go back to carrying tons of books of my back every day in winter because damn things were just too small to put everything in - and we had to share the locker in pairs, so even less space. Especially when we had to change shoes from outdoor ones to school (clean and dry) ones. Everything in the locker was so damp and gross in winter, ugh.
almost exact situation is in russian schools! none of the schools have lockers so my back and shoulders would always hurt because of the damn books. and yeah, changing shoes in winter was a mess and a pain in the ass haha
I'm in the UK and my school was similar, though a lot bigger. In classes we sat in tables of 2, though occasionally we moved tables around for group work, but the majority of the time it was either individual or pair work. And thanks for your skiving story, it makes me feel a lot better about the time I tried to skive off a lesson (I was one of those goody 2 shoes students, but I really hated the teacher) in the bathrooms (back before they were locked during lessons), sitting in a cubicle by myself trying to be silent. After 15 mins I got bored and went to 'isolation' classroom (I know we didn't call it that, but it was where students that were sent out of class, and those on suspension went), though I had to ask at reception where it was, and honestly they had no idea what to do with me so I just sat and did homework. I now know I'm autistic and this experience now makes a lot more sense.
For group work with desks we just put the desks in a circle! Also my high school had a variety of desks and tables, usually English and Science had tables and other classes like math had desks
To answer your desk question we had to drag the desk around the classroom for group stuff and form the most chaotic, pain in the behind, space gobbling desk monster possible. Moving single desk around was always a huge pain especially if the group was more than 4 people/desks
When i went to school here in Australia, the desks in primary school (Prep to grade 6/7) were often arranged in goofy layouts like L shapes and big court room square vibes, but then in high school it was more a few desks in a row with some classrooms having tall benches like the art rooms and the science rooms, where you sat 4 to 6 people facing each other. But then there were still some class rooms with whacky layouts too XD
My American experience is that we rarely had single desks, especially in middle and high school. We usually had those tables that two people sit at and sometimes they would smush two of those tables together so it’s like 4 people
When I was in 1st grade, the desks in my classroom were U shaped and there were a few more desks in the middle of the U, and the teacher made the naughty kids go to the middle so they'd feel judged by everyone looking at them LMAO looking back it was pretty fucked. Also, in primary school we had music class in a container. Yes, like the ones in Eco Lifestyle, winter wasn't very fun LMFAO
In Elementary school we're grouped in classes but spend like 80% in the same classroom only changing rooms for specialized classes (think P.E.). Students have individual desks to stash their materials in and the teacher just has students move/rearrange desks as needed. In High school/Secondary school, each student has an individualized schedule and change rooms between subjects. classrooms usually have a bunch of desks which the teachers arrange as needed. A couple of my classes had tables.
In Poland most schools up to high school have desk for 2 students, so you sit in pairs (sometimes it's a bigger desk, for 3-4 students, but mostly there are 2 people desks and you have to share). Also school is usually just one big building, no extra blocks. Also often the building are historical and had different purpose in the past (for example, my primary school was a temporary hospital building during II World War).
Heart stopper actually felt very Americanised, I kept forgetting that it was meant to be British. The authentic British school experience is more like in the inbetweeners
You mentioning about “Temp 1” being burnt down reminds me of my temp block, no fire but we did have two guys try and nick the copper and any loose fixtures off the temp buildings late at night. They got it all off then left it all next to the side gate/fencing besides the block when they were getting chased out (there was legit a police station attached to the front of the school). Stupidly they came back a few days later during school time to get it in their van saying they were asked by school to move it so students don’t get hurt, one guy lifted a pipe then lost hold on it not realising there was a f**k off nail at the top went into the other guys head. Seriously wish I was joking!, all students in class next to it (I was one of them) watching out the windows teacher trying to evacuate the class, someone fainted whole situation. Police came to the scene and recognised the two of them! Such a weird situation! Ps our temp classes where language, health and social care, reshape and R.E!!
We had a “temporary” drama hut, a ridiculous amount of stairs to get up to the English block and a tiny little sixth form art room that was BOILING in the summer, the roof tiles would start to lift off when it was windy and then it would flood in the rain. British high school ❤️😂 We also had mixed year group forms 😊
I know a lot of Americans have already commented, but my experience with class seating was dependent on your age and teacher's preferences. From grades 1-4, we kept our individuals desks arranged either in a U shape or in small groups of four. Desks were separated only for standardized test weeks. In grades 5 onward our individual desks were kept separated, but we could move our desks and chairs as needed whenever group projects came up. During these grade levels, I only ever experienced tables for desks in art and computer classes. In high school/college most of my classes continued using individual desk seating, I had tables only in science, art, and computers. At university I mostly had individual desks again. My language and writing classes prioritized positioning them in a U or circle shape. My science classes used individual desks during daily classes but tables during the weekly labs. My computer course used individual desks iirc. Since all university students were provided with a laptop as part of tuition, tables were not necessary.
My school combined 2 of the classic British school themes: the red brick converted ww2 hospital built around a central quadrangle for upper school; and the ubiquitous concrete block for lower school. Both were obviously a delight
out of every american school i've gone to, we rarely actually had separated desks! a lot of teachers choose to group students at a single, larger table that can seat maybe 4-6 people, so it's not that far off! And, when we are working at single desks, we would physically group the single desks together during group assignments.
In Canada, we call 'mobiles' 'portables' at school. My elementary school had 3 but my high school had none...no one wanted to be in the portables cause then you had to get your snow boots on just to go to the bathroom in the main building...
Same here! I was lucky that I went to the newest high school in my district so the school was underpopulated, although every other high school had portables.
Because of the size of America, the slang we use for things is widely different. My region calls it skipping class, my school district actually has a 'senior skip day' where all the 12th graders (we call them seniors as in senior classmen) just don't show up to school, at all. They don't call out sick or anything, they just stay home or hang out with friends away from campus.
In my Highschool we had either circles or Hexagons to sit at and if you didn't want to sit looking at everyone else at your table then you could pop a squat and work on the floor
Finally someone who built a school I can relate to. lol Kids these days and their apparently nice schools. I can't wait to get my hands on this pack and build my early 2000's high school complete with underfunded arts department and brick cement walls.
@@islaintheshire you had shirt aprons? We just got clay on our overpriced sweaters while our art teacher showed us Rocky Horror and told us about how she used to be a nun but now had two boyfriends
It really depends on the teacher, like generally in high school and middle school you have your own desks but they might be pushed together in groups of four or two. In my philosophy class in high school we even put them in a big circle for seminars. If there was group work we would just push the desks together or maybe even go outside and sit on the grass or at the lunch tables. In elementary school there were definitely more teachers who pushed the desks together or had large tables, but since we only had one teacher all year in elementary school our desks usually opened through the top or through the side and you would keep all your stuff in there. Science classrooms generally had the layout you designed for the UK classrooms. Basically, each teacher would choose and it usually depended on which subject it was and how often there would be group work. Also there were a lot of teachers who would be like “ask your seat partner ‘____’” if the desks were in groups or “ask the person to your left ‘___’” if they weren’t, so we would always have to interact with the people next to us even if we weren’t in groups. Anyways I went way too into detail with this and I don’t even know if it made any sense, but hopefully it helps? Oh also this is my experience in various schools across california specifically, I didn’t go to school outside of the state at any point so this is my narrow scope.
To answer your question as an American we would push the single desks together in a circle or like facing each other for group work and push them back when we were done. We also had rectangle desks too! I honestly hated those because I was shy and they forced you to socialize lol
I’m from the Netherlands and in elementary school we had tables grouped together like the rectangle you explained; those seats were usually assigned. In middle school/high school (? the school system in the Netherlands is so different idk wtf all your schools are) it was pretty much the same. They tried to assign the seats as well but its kids aged 12-18 so in the end they gave up on that. In college the tables were placed in rows of three, so you weren’t sitting alone either. The American school experience honestly looks like permanent detention to me 🥲
This is deffo a northern school! In Devon nearly every secondary school was knocked down from 2000-2006 and re built and have the same aesthetic (Modern and open spaces) I’ve never heard of a ‘mobile’ before! Really interesting to see how schools differ x
Some schools in the US have those “mobiles,” too, but where I lived we called them “portables!” Both elementary schools (these encompass ages 5-11) I went to had several of them. It’s definitely an interesting experience to go to class in them, since it’s essentially going to school in a trailer. The mobiles in this video brought back a lot of memories lol
This really reminds me of my high school on the IOW in the south, but then again, the island is about 20 years behind the rest of the UK so maybe it's different in the rest of the south xD
In my high school, we mostly had either separate desks or we had tables where two to four students sat. Most of my educational experience had a mix of group tables and individual desks. I think the individual desks were to keep kids from cheating or talking in class too much, not that it really worked.
The seating always depended on the teacher for me. A lot of my science rooms had tables instead of single desks, my history teacher liked us all facing each other for discussions. When we had group work & single desks we would push desks together
We had temporary classrooms (which housed RS and PSHE) ... they were colloquially known as "the sheds" ... they arrived in 2000, and to my knowledge, they're still there to this day!
I'm from Finland and the desks are usually singular desks, but depending on the teacher they are arranged into squares, u-shapes, and usually just lines or pairs of two. my friends and I would always pick desks near eachother
Got to say i got amusement from you saying one of your transportable building's burnt down. At my high school our front office and several classrooms were burnt in the main building... and it says everything about how underprivllaged my school was that it was just boarded off, never fixed. Also as an Australian your school seems so much more familiar to me than the American ones. Also, i'm sorry about your grandfather.
It's so interesting hearing what schooling details were like for other countries. Apart from the desk situation, in Australia at my public high school we had houses that each had a corresponding colour and name (ours were named after white colonists 💀), but they were really only relevant for sporting days and we didn't have a house points system, probably because behaviour issues at the school were so rampant that a house points system would have just made things unnecessarily complicated. Each house had a boy house captain and a girl house captain, and we also had general school captains that were elected via campaign and vote (again, a boy and girl, with a boy and a girl deputy as well). We didn't have showers after PE (phys ed) but we did change into PE uniform (I HATED the texture of those shorts they haunt me to this day). We weren't a super fancy school, we were very much the local "feral" school aka the school with the lowest SES, and we didn't get a lot of funding. I think at private schools in the state it differs a bit and the house system is a slightly bigger deal. We had a huge rivalry with a private school nearby and students were constantly getting into fights after school because we shared some of the same bus stops. They would basically shout classist shit at us and then we would get unnecessarily violent in response. At one point it got so cartoonishly out of control that a group of students from the private school bought uniforms for our school (we had cheap uniforms specifically chosen so that the families could afford them, you could get a shirt and shorts at a local shop for like $15), and sneaked into the school at lunchtime *to enter our krumping competition* to try to show us up there. (Yes, we had krumping competitions every Wednesday during lunch in the school gym, it was 2009.) One of our school captains got elected by landslide majority after he gave an impassioned speech about how we might not have the funds, and we might not get the best grades, and we might be poor, feral, and stinky, but we would still always better than [private school].
New Zealand college/high school is more like British high school with houses, prefects, head pupils etc. but we had singular lightweight desks that could easily be rearranged into group settings (which you were most likely to get shoved in with a kid you didn’t get on with.) My school was a newly created combined co-Ed and had half new buildings and half old buildings, which was quite odd, and our music class was in a small chapel. We had two options for instruments: drums or guitar, and I wanted something more classical/orchestral to learn. Ironically, I am now a proud drummer and percussionist. Edit: We call skipping school “wagging.” Never did it.
In my experience, the whole seating situation largely depended on what each teacher decided for their room! When we had single desks that were typically kept separate, we would drag them closer for group work.
Yeah some teachers put 4 desks in a group facing each other and some had us in a big outline around the room.
My school seating was like that till covid
For me kindergarten through 5th we always had groups and afterwards we didn’t and would move our desks together if we needed to.
This exactly! I actually had a room in high school where it was a big square of desks where we all faced each other! But I also had rooms with tables-two at a table, and then regular desks that were do uncomfortable when the chair and desk was connected!
i remember whenever we walked into the classroom and the desks were pushed together in a U shape everyone would skip because no one wanted to do discussion tables it was hilarious
As an American, the screeching and squeezing of moving desks to get into your groups will live forever in my brain
Yep. I can hear it
and then having to move them back before the next class comes lmaoo :"D
Actually, in America seating arrangements also depend on the teacher! In the majority of my classrooms, our desks are connected, but even if they aren't, during group-work we are allowed to scoot them close together. In elementary school, we always sat in groups, no lone desks.
I'm older but all through school I only remember having lone desks. I think it's a new thing with teachers being more open minded to flexible seating.
yep! I think for tv/movies set in america they usually do all single desks just for like camera angle purposes haha
@@MichelleZB1 Think it also depends on the school tbh. I live in a fairly small city so the way our classes run is more up to the teacher
@@juliamar2372 ummm but the desk are like that for a lot of people tho
Did you have the bright colored shaped tables in elementary school too?
As someone who’s currently going to school in Germany, I can totally relate, the whole seating situation is definitely something that is more American. We usually sit in either u shapes or rectangles as well, sometimes even straight up lines. The whole locker thing is also something that seems really unknown to me, I usually have to carry my stuff around with me the whole day lmao.
And I can definitely relate to the whole ugly school thing. I mean I can’t talk for all schools in Germany but our school was once declared the ugliest school in my state so…yeah fun to go to 💀
My school (in Germany too) actually had lockers. But one locker you see in American school were four seperate lockers and they were only for 5th and 6th graders 🤷♀
we had lockers for like 2 years but my school took them away for "covid reasons" lol.
In Russia (in big cities) we also don't have lockers, but we do have a coat (?) section where you leave your jacket/coat/etc and shoes during the day. You must take off outdoorsy shoes and put on some clean ones (usually sneakers), especially in winter, since it will get noticably messy if you walk around leaving puddles of dirty melting snow everywhere lol Of course, noone likes transporting a bag of shoes every day from home to school and then back, so when the weather is okay (warm and dry) you can get away with not changing your shoes. There's also an option of keeping your indoorsy pair of shoes at school at all times, but there's always a possibility of it being stolen 😅 Having lockers wouldn't hurt... lol
tbf in the uk although there were lockers they made you pay to use them so everyone just carried everying with them lol. n they were super unsafe
this is exactly how it's like in british schools. We have lockers but they're tiny and so irrelevant - always in some random corridor and NO ONE uses them. It's just not a thing over here to use lockers. We just carry our stuff cuz we're not lazy fucks
Australia has the “group” / rows of tables or at least groups of two. But we definitely didn’t have singular desks. When I went to school in Japan it was singular desks though.
Can confirm as a fellow Aussie. Had groups of four as a kid, was not fun as the local weirdo.
My high school had singles, but i was in QLD, so who knows.
@@crvptydgaming8286 "But that was in QLD, so who knows" is somehow such a quintessentially Australian sentiment. I grew up mainly in VIC and NSW but was born in QLD and every time I mention where I was born VIC and NSW people freak out as if they have to re-evaluate their entire idea of me as a human being lol
Yeah, I think it's generally how it is in this build; groups of tables laid out. At the public primary school and public high schools I went to it was like two-seater or three-seater tables that would be arranged into rows or a pattern around the room, like some classrooms were set up so the tables made a big U-shape. Sometimes the teacher would ask us to move them about, especially because sometimes another class had moved them into a bizarre shape or the kids had been throwing chairs at each other again. I remember scrambling to get the seat on the end of the row/table so that I could have a 50% less painful lesson with only one person next to me (me-and-plumbella-shaking-hands-over-undiagnosed-autism-meme insert here).
I did go to a private primary school for a bit though, and in some classrooms they did have these slanted old wooden single standing desks that had a hinge on the top so you could store all your pencils/books etc inside. I was obsessed with those because they made me feel like I was in Harry Potter (me-and-plumbella-shaking-hands-over-harry-potter-based-escapism-in-school-meme insert here).
@@dirkjenkins1253 QLD is a weird place, we don't talk about it lmao.
I grew up there but moved to SA so I get it. My husband jokes and calls me a 'banana lander' to tease me 😅
9:53 Ahhh yes. The "temporary blocks" that ended up staying 25 years after you'd left the school. For me, it was a 'block' for languages (4 rooms for French & German) and another 'block' for English. Except that one was for the bottom sets (6, 7, and 8?) They were the only buildings to not have toilets, which was such a pain if you had to go. (My school looked like a square layout with a bunch of bungalows)
those blocks give me the same vibes as when one of my schools decided to transfer non kindergarten kids into a factory building they had temporary walls around to create a school layout but never actually replaced those walls with anything so the school looks like a blocky hellscape LMAO
Yeah we had these too in my school in Oxfordshire. We called them Terrapins. Freezing in the winter!
For us we had a 'temporary' library that was due to be up '1-2 years'. It lasted a decade.
Our temp building was for maths. Kept it until they rebuilt the school but it was up for probably 20 years.
So many memories! In primary school we had portacabins on the sports field (tarmac field, of course) and then in high school it was our languages block in the yard! I wonder if they’re still there…
hope you’re doing well love, my condolences for the loss of your grandfather.❤️
I'm a teacher and I feel so seen. Our office is literally a cupboard that 5 of us share. We love school's funding in the UK ✌️
Is that a peace sign or F U to the Tories? 😆 I can relate
in my experience americans call it "cutting class"/"skipping class"/"ditching class" this one is more antiquated but ppl will also call it "playing hooky"
In England we call it simply “bunking”! Haha
in australia we call it "wagging" lol
@@migglep We call it wagging the UK too 😂
@@user-cl2hi9fo6j do we? I've never heard anyone say that, I'm from the north so it could just be me
@@daerincakes I'm from the Midlands, maybe that's why lol
I grew up in the uk and then my family moved to australia 2 years after starting highshool, imagine a shit load of mobile buildings linked with outdoor concrete pathways.. thats australian public schools. It was the weirdest experience, getting swooped by angry birds as you walked/ran to your next class
Aha we got attacked by seagulls going between buildings in the U.K. too
The good old magpie's they are evil
Mate the contrast between the crumbling old derelict portable buildings and the maybe two modern buildings only there because of random government funding just added to the charm!
Gotta love magpie season 🤙 They put signs out the front of one of schools that I went to because the walk from the front gate to the office/admin (a little bit of a walk) was where a heap liked to nest
Oh yeah, I'd say the main difference between Australian schools and the American/British ones is that everything is just a lot more outdoors... at my school we didn't really have lockers as such, we usually kept our bags outside on the portracks. There were little lockers in our homeroom classes but they were really inconvenient to get to once you started moving around for the day
We had school houses as well and a system of points to win the school cup. About the only thing that was ever relevant for earning points was winning sports carnivals though.... no love for the arts or sciences
We had single desks at my school in all but the science labs. When we did group stuff they would give us a few minutes to shift our desks together. Weirdly less chaotic than it sounds though.
I had this too. Although I’m from Massachusetts which is a very British rooted state and my schools honestly looked close to the one Jessie made.
Lol yep just push ‘em together!
I got my finger pinched between 2 desks more than once doing this in elementary school
Interesting, we just had larger desks for 2 or 3 students. You did the labs with whoever was at your table, they were nice and big too wish all the classes were like that...
I can still hear the dragging of desks on the linoleum floor haha
I’m pretty sure I had A few teachers who had us move our desks into big circles too
Our "temporary" mobile classroom was known as "the shed"
And then we had a massive "temporary" block of classrooms, that was baltic in the winter, and roasting in the summer, and the walls and floors were so thin that if someone sneezed, the entire building would vibrate
Also, fun fact. My dad taught at that secondary school for over 25 years, and those "temporary" classrooms were there when he arrived, and only got taken down the year he left (and only because they were rebuilding the entire school)
Before it was knocked down, it was the strangest patchwork school of random additions from different eras in completely different architectural styles and materials.
It was an absolute maze to get around in year 7 even with the map
We had temp classrooms and one day we turned up and they were gone, they got rid but forgot to move us to a different classroom so we had to sit down on the concrete floor where the classroom was, and we did this for weeks🤣
They're called portables in my part of australia XD
@@countrye3013 ayee we called them portables at my school in the US too
Our temps were the same, 1940s-2009 RIP. My form room was one and we realised if you lobbed water bottles vertically up the lids would hole punch the ceiling... And then we had to move forms coz of asbestos. The memories 😍
This looks exactly like my highschool, except my high school exterior was designed to look like a train from a birds-eye view. And they were weirdly proud of it as well. From the ground, though, it just looked like any other depressing, concrete tory monolith.
You can't just come in here saying stuff like "my high school exterior was designed to look like a train" like that's remotely normal, and not give a bit more info so we can Google and get a look at this weirdness...
That's a very interesting and unique design for a school lol
@@Fireberries There was a train station in the town and I guess they thought that was special. There was also an open septic mains running along the bottom end of the sports field, and they had to build a new primary school on the front sports field because the old primary school started sinking into the ground. 70s and 80s UK infrastructure really is a different breed.
If I was in charge of a school that looked like a train from a birds eye view I'd never shut up about it. That's art camouflaged into the real world baby
Not as cool as urs but mine is an E from a birds-eye view, maybe its a thing for schools??
As an American highschool student, to the question about desks is that they're usually singular and the teachers push some of the desks together (also we do have group work we just move our chairs) if we don't have singular desks we have long tables and we also push them together sometimes.(and we still move our chairs depending on where our partner is)
And the sound of desks scraping on the linoleum is one of the worst sounds in existence
@@scofieldvictoria I'm getting horrible flashbacks now! Lol 😆
@@flumpyofdoom I’m in the break room at work and guess what I heard while reading your reply (thank goodness it was only one) 😆
@@scofieldvictoria lmfao 🤣
@@scofieldvictoria symphony of scraping hell chairs lol 😆
American teacher here! The seating arrangement in most cases is entirely up to the teacher. While the individual/separate are traditional, they are no longer encouraged as we are heavily encouraged to give group work. If a teacher does keep desks in rows, they normally have students move their desks into groups then move back later.
Okay I am living for all of these different Simmers recreating the schools of THEIR childhood. It's so interesting seeing things that are universal to the shcooling experience contrasted with all of the quirky little details that make each unique. idk, I just love it
hey there, funny seeing you here - I love your drawtectives videos!
@@PopcornEmma Thanks! And I'm not surprised Drawfee fans find their way to Plumbella: both have a chaotic yet wholesome energy and PEAK comedy haha
As someone who grew up in sweden; having seperated seating is really foreign to me. We either sat like 3-8 in a line or in like a rounded group of 4-6. Never once have I had to sit seperated.
As an American I never really sat separated for most of my classes, the desks are usually put together in rows or tables, or you scoot them for group work
I had classes that were separate desks and seated together at tables. My kids school doesn't have a single classroom with separate desks. So it's not strange here but not the rule either.
We would only ever have the separated seating for exams and tests so you couldn't cheat (I live in New Zealand)
The same in Australia, we all sat together it’s so weird seeing separate seating
The only time I’ve ever sat alone at a single desk was when I had to take end of year exams in high school in New Zealand. It would be so weird sitting in a classroom with no one sitting next to you and everyone just spread evenly across the room. It would be sad not being able to sit next to your friends.
American here, in my school it really depended on the teacher how the desks were set up. There were definitely single desk set ups, especially when we had a test, but there was also a large amount of rooms that had group setups. And sometimes there were wild card setups like my European history teacher liked to set up our desks in an almost college seminar formation.
Love the feeling of the portacabins that are meant to be temporary but have been there for twenty years. Certainly some trauma responses - and I went to private school, and it was still like this.
Australian here - we had single desks but they were very rarely positioned by themselves unless we were doing tests or something. The teachers would arrange them however they liked, which was very jarring when you'd come back after a term break and they were in a completely new formation. Honestly, the most memorable thing about the desks was being one of 20+ kids in close proximity trying to move the chairs on top of them at the end of the day so it was easier for the cleaners to vacuum.
As an aside, loved seeing the different blocks and mobiles (we call them demountables in Aus) - maybe this is just cause I went to a public school in the sticks, but we basically never had just one big building for high school like the stereotypical American ones (even the posh schools built themselves more like uni campuses). There was always one super old building dating from when the school first opened, the dedicated blocks like the library, office and hall and then just constant additions of little buildings and demountables here and there as the school grew over the years. Our school in particular had a fun little tradition of 'which block will be off limits next?' as kids kept punching holes in the walls and uncovering asbestos, thus closing the room/ block for the foreseeable future...
As an American who literally went to 5 different high schools (yes high schools - not including the multiple middle schools I went to) - not all American high schools are the same and do not bear any resemblance to the typical “American high school.” At least that’s my experience. 🤷🏻♀️
yep, every high school i've ever seen or been into in the US varies wildly from the last. mainly based off of how bougie (or not) the neighborhood it's located in is!
Same with german schools!
Yeah the architecture of the schools I went to depended on if they were built during segregation or not, and even then, on whether they were a black-only or white-only school.
were your schools all really into sports like football games in the evening and cheerleaders? Also are they always the popular ones or are they just popular in the movies lol? i always wanted to go to an American high school cause i thought it would be like movies
@@carmen420 it prob depends on where you live. I live in the country so sports, esp football was HUGE. but it also depends on what the students at the school are good at, for instance if the football team sucks but they have a wrestling team who wins lots of games, that school will be all about wrestling. The school I went to wasn't as "clique-y" as they make it out to be in the movies, but my school was also incredibly small. Like movies make out ppl to be "band geeks" however there were a lot of popular students in band at my school, there were some popular people and jocks in the drama club.
However, the emo/scene kids and the jocks DID get into a fight in the football stands at a game once so that was interesting.
So glad you did a British version because I cannot with US high school vibe.
I’d rather trauma bond with you than relive my hs trauma 😂🙃
i used to go to school in japan, and they have the same single desks as in america, and i actually thought it was quite convenient for group work cos you just quickly push your desks together with a few people or if its pair work you could just push your desk together with the person next to you
Oh Jesse. I'm so sorry to hear about ya grandad. Yet at least your laughing. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine. This school definitely looks far different from the highschools I've been in here in the U.S.
I’m italian and here in Italy usually we have two seat desks in the classroom (so two people per desk) for pretty much all grades of school (except for kindergarten where we had big round desks). Some schools have “lab desks” that are for 3 people. In my high school for a couple of years we also had single desks that where kept separated but we used to put them together for group/duos works
In my experience going to school in America, a lot of the times we had separate desks. The only times we would really sit together would be in lab for science. We basically had a long table with barstools for that set up.
ah my school in UK had a similar science set up
i absolutely HATEEE the science stools.. they say it’s to “help your posture” but it just ends up hurting everyone’s back 😭😭
@@nerdychocobo same
There must be a reason why they use bar stools in science labs, because we also had bar stools in the science lab in Australia.
So you can stand up and get away quicker if an experiment goes wrong!
im american: for group work we would just push our desks together lol. single desks i think are mainly used for science, math so people dont cheat off one another on tests. in my experience, more social sciences, history, english, etc. was where we sat in groups. so interesting hearing about how schools are organized around the world! so sorry for your loss babe, this was a great video
For me in America the only class i had with groups tables was science. math, english, and history all had single desks.
That’s so intriguing!! I’m in Canada and my hs had individual desks in most literature classes, double desks (like a table in the sims) were in science and art rooms, math and social sciences were individual desks pushed together into groups of 4-5, and history was individual desks in a U shape... so weird for no reason lol
@@navareeves8976 same, science was the only class i ever had with group tables.
hope you're doing okay, jessie. don't force yourself with videos if you can't get yourself to do them. sorry for your loss
think she’s posting all her pre recorded stuff xx
@@notwithoutpizza4702 yeah, she probably is actually. oops
@@notwithoutpizza4702 she mentions in the video that her grandpa died so
Not all desks in American school are made for one student. In my school teachers could sometimes request whether they wanted single desks or tables but sometimes they didn’t get to choose or would get crappier ones because they chose. When you have to do group work at single desks you usually get up and move some of your stuff tina desk near your group or sometimes you just move the desks around to be closer. Then when the bell rings and class is over you all awkwardly rearrange the desks. Some teachers who really like assigning group work would request big tables and arrange them in a circle or half circle to make people talk together, and in most science rooms there were two person tables where you sit next to your assigned lab partner.
Now this is a school I can relate to. The greenhouse windows! The hall with the stage for assemblies! The “temporary” buildings that were used for decades!
The fact that everything is made of lots of different blocks cobbled together somehow into a school instead of a nice attractive single building too. Almost makes me miss my secondary school (which has since been knocked down and replaced by houses… ah Britain)
In Brazil the desks are separated as well to "minimize distractions and parallel conversations", so when there's a group or duo project you have to drag your desk and chair close to your group lol. We only have "glued desks" in kindergarten and sometimes elementary school.
I think it also depends on the school. I did high school in 2 diff schools and one of them had tables together where 2 people would sit. The other one was individual tables as usual
Acabei de fechar os boletins do segundo semestre dos meus alunos e não aguento mais ver a expressão “conversa paralela” lol
Also middle school and high school are often in the same building, if is a private school (and big enough) it has elementary school, middle school and high school in the same building too 💀💀; and even so, people from different grades don't usually interact (like, 1st grade and 2nd grade having classes together, that's impossible here). Foda que a experiência de uma escola pública pra uma escola particular tbm muda muito, além dos diferentes estados.
My high school was one of those modern 2010’s schools that looked really nice from the outside with lots of natural light but the inside was made of white ciderblocks and grey plastic flouring that always looked dirty no matter what also uncomfortably bright paint on one wall of each classroom which. I think they were trying to go for modern and clean looking but they built it cheap I assume
McMansion: School Edition
Woah did we go to the same school?
Mine was like this too, like an attempt at a modernist building I guess but it got dilapidated and dated looking pretty quickly
Mine was the same all modern and nice looking outside but inside looked cheap
Same here, my art teacher in particular would always complain about the architecture of my school and how they built the art room bad cause of the way the light sources make drawing from life particularly annoying.
In American high school (well at least mine) we never touched our lockers... Our school was too big and there wasnt enough time in between classes to go back in forth so we just ended up carrying our heavy ass backpacks around all day.
Exactly the same at mine. I had a locker but literally never opened it. I did use my locker in middle school tho
They removed all lockers from Campus my Sophomore year to "reduce drugs & weapons". Not that anyone could use them, as you said, too large with no time.
lmfao we had them at my school (England) got given one in year 7, never even opened it
Meanwhile, my nephews had to use their lockers in Jr High because the schools had banned backpacks.
Yeah, my HS was a campus and after too many people were late to class due to lockers being far away, they just removed all lockers from the school. 😅 So we didn't have to carry all our books around we did get a class set and a home set, though.
Hey, I am from Namibia, and my school was a private school from grades 00 - 12, with a lot of British influence but a little American influence as well. it was split into three segments: lower primary (grade 00-3), upper primary (grade 4-6), and high school (grade 7-12). The sitting situation where typically in pairs or groups of 4 for primary and in high school it largely depended on the teacher. We did not have a gym hall/venue and did PE on the school's field and sports court, and also did not have a cafeteria but two tuck shops, one at the playground for the lower primary side and the other at the highschool drop off/sitting area.
For group work, the single desks are very light and can very easily be moved, so we'd just quickly and easily rearrange our rooms on the fly depending on needs. Very flexible. For very early grades, American schools may use large table setups, or pods of single desks put up against eachother. I'm almost 40 and moved around a lot as a kid and saw a lot of different ways teachers set up their classrooms. I had some elementary teachers who had rigid little rows of separate desks, and others who put desks together into pods or used a table. My 4th grade teacher kept all his desks in a U shape.
And yeah, "temporary" classrooms which become permanent while continuing to be heating/cooling nightmares without good restroom access are a real problem at American schools, too.
One of my favorite things about this pack so far is seeing all the different types of schools from across the world as you Simmers build them for us. I grew up in the Midwestern United States and now I'm raising my daughter in the Pacific Northwestern US and the differences in schools just between the two regions here are wild. I'm also an educator now (though I teach teachers) so this is giving me interesting insight into how things are done elsewhere.
what differences are there between them 2 places? lol i always assumed that high schools would be like in the movies but I've heard they're way different
@@carmen420 Well, in warmer climates in the US (such as southern California) a lot of schools are open to the outdoors and the doors to the classrooms lead out into the outdoor common areas (think Princess Diaries and Veronica Mars as examples). Up here in the Northwest, we have lots of what Jesse referred to as "moblies" in this video but we call them "portables" over here. Those pop up when we run out of space in the buildings.
Back in the Midwest everything had to be inside because the climate is a lot colder than it is on the West Coast. You'll find lots of schools like the default one in the new pack--older buildings in bigger cities. Sometimes if communities are wealthy and people vote to improve things, you may see some modern builds. My high school, for example, was just recently updated in 2015 (I graduated in 07) with a new auditorium and commons area. In bigger cities and lower-income communities, things are awful. In smaller, suburban, wealthier communities things can be pretty advanced and high tech.
I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but our schools depend on local communities for tax dollars to pay for things. So if a community is not well-off, their schools are generally terribly equipped, sometimes with mold and asbestos issues, leaky roofs, outdated, dilapidated textbooks etc... That's pretty much universal in the US as far as school buildings go.
Yes, I’m so excited for when the pack comes out and lots of people have access to it and everyone builds high schools from their own country. It will be so cool to see all the different schools! I’m from New Zealand and I’m personally excited to try build a typical NZ school. I hope to see lots of different schools from different countries on the gallery, it would be so fun to look at them.
I live in Spain, and In my school we had single desks, but up until 7th grade we would push the desks together if we sat in pairs (the teacher assigned the pairs at the beginning of year, and could separate all the desks/change pairs depending on how things went). So it kinds varied
As a teacher I can confirm that staff rooms are indeed repurposed cupboards
Oh the nostalgia is strong with this one, the dinner hall was also the assembly hall that was also where anything else happened like parents eve etc. the seating arrangement tended to change depending on if the teacher was on one, you either sat with mates or it was designated boy girl boy girl. Oh you smashed this one for sure 💜
I’m from middle America and in elementary school our gym was our lunch room and auditorium and housed any special events like the science fair or Kansas living history day.
From what I remember when I went to school my first 4 years in Russia, it's double desks all evenly spaced apart, facing the teacher.. So you always had a desk neighbor. You also go to all of your classes with your same class group, so by the time you graduate, they're basically your family (whether you like em or not) The school I went to is a 4 or 5 story building and all the grades go there - elementary age kids on floor 2 and middle and high school age kids on higher floors. Though we had like one class, which was English, on the 3rd floor. First floor was these big metal cages for each class's stuff - like a communal locker for each class, cafeteria, a couple of specialty classes, like shop, and a connecter hallway to the art, gym, and auditorium part of the school. I believe in bigger cities they do separate elementary and other levels of schooling. Not sure though.
In the states, I don't really remember what the setup was in elementary school..I think it was multiple people to a desk? But I could be wrong.. Single story, quite a small building.
But starting in middle school the separation began, where it was single desks. Don't really remember much group anything, but you just kinda figured it out when you got group work - either go sit at someone else's desk to be closer to the people in your group, if they weren't sat next to you, or work outside of class, like at the library or something. Also, all of the classes were with different groups - sometimes you had your friend in a couple of your classes, sometimes not at all. Never had a class group you permanently belong to. Just changing up groups constantly all over the place.
My Jr high (middle school but started at 7th grade and went up to 9th) was a single story building. High school was a two story building that looks like a prison from the outside (pale yellow blocky building with tiny horizontal windows along like hip level when inside the classroom) with a couple of trailers outside it for some of the classes, and apparently a whole observatory, that I'd never actually been to.
This is all making me realize it's been a while since I graduated school. I'm actually happy about this because I never really enjoyed that experience. 😄
The idea of having everything contained to one building is wild to me too. My college was spread out across 7 buildings and 5 huts (iykyk)
I’ve never been so happy to see a British school in my life.I feel so included ✌🏽
I think mostly we call it 'ditching' but older people sometimes refer to it as 'playing hooky'.
(of course accounting for regional dialects! I am in the southwestern US)
The mobiles, the houses, the separate buildings for things… this is so massively different from my high school. Now I have to spend the next however many hours of my life rebuilding my school. The trauma I’m about to relive..
Feeling the dystopian vibes. Love it.
Here in Australia we had a different style of big concrete and brick boxes. Lots of durable materials that can't burn easy.
We had these long benches every where that we'd sit at outside during lunch and recess.
I’m kinda amazed how well you managed to recreate an English school with sims content, it always feels really america-centric
American group work has everyone drag their desks across the room and make terrible noise or everyone just gathers around one person's desk (I'm physically disabled and couldn't move around much so everyone knew they had to come to me for group work). In elementary school, the individual desks are usually kind of pushed together to form groups of 3 or 4 desks.
The way Jesse loves her family and friends so deeply and presently is so beautiful dude 🥹💖 ugh. Cryin.
I’m American but almost never had single desks until college tbh! Almost always in group tables like you said, tho most often the tables are multiple smaller tables together. I did have a few teachers that did single desks arranged in various ways. In college it’s very common to have single desks and we just move around for group work. America is a big place and most of these things will vary a lot even within one town’s public schools. Also, many schools have detention which I think is the same as the isolation rooms at least in theory :)
It’s so weird to me to see so many buildings where you have to walk outside to go from class to class. I’m from Canada and my primary and high school had 2 big buildings that had an inside bridge/corridor so you could access them without having to go outside.
Also for the desks situation, it really depended on your teacher’s preference. I had the single desks in 4 single rows, islands of around 5 or 6 desks pushed together and I also had all the desks lined up together to form a big U shape around the walls of the classroom. But in high school, most of the time it was the single desk rows. It’s funny to see what feels normal to us be very weird to someone else 😛
My school (in Scotland) had a corridor between the towerblock and the courtblock buildings but it was the admin corridor and only seniors, S5/6, were allowed to use it while the S1-4s went outside to get between them.
I honestly can't wait to buy this pack just to build my school. It's a total mix of styles, from like some super old detailed four story building to a random concrete block and a couple of benches outside haha
Ain't that the way. My school was originally built in the Victorian era and its like all red brick and ✨️aesthetic✨️. And then the Tories and Thatcher made half of it be sold so now we have a 1970s science block just thrown on and a portable classroom on the courtyard. It's great. I'm so looking forward to building it. 😅
Broke: watching Heartstopper for the cute gay love story and beautiful representation
Woke: watching Heartstopper because it perfectly represents what it's like at a British secondary school 😂
I went to high school in Jamaica we had separated desks just as the pack and for group work we would just move our desks together they weren't bolted to the ground.
In my schools in America we mostly had single desks in every class except science classes, because they involved a lot of group work. Every teacher has their choice of how to lay out the desks (pushing the single desks together into groups or just laying them out in specific ways in the class) and we usually push the desks together to do group work or just stand around.
not british but this still feels more 'realistic' and relatable than all the other high school builds ive seen, hope you add it to your save file
HOUSE POINTS!!! someone finally remembers those, in Wales we would have an Eistedfodd yearly (poetry, writing competitions etc.) and the 3 houses in our year would win points based on who won the competitions which would THEN lead to an ultimate winner, god i miss it cause my house did infact win xx
My house always lost but it was called Hiscock which made face writing at sports day in my all girls school a real hilarity
Oh god the Eisteddfods
We used to go fucking feral over that every year!! my house never won lmao
Wait houses are an actual thing? Not just Harry Potter?? lmao
@@gusleybighusley6062 its not really as relevant as harry potter it just acts as like teams for competitions, sportd day etc. 😭
Sports*
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that decided to recreate their own highschool with the upcoming pack. I'm mexican and I attended a private catholic highschool not bc I'm religious but because it's one of the best in terms of education. And the building was so freaking hard to build in the sims, it has a lot of lvls and i did my best using platforms to try and recreate that and it also made me question the layout of my highschool specially the teacher's room, the principal's and the secretary's all connected, but had fun and I can't wait for the expansion to be launched and be able to replay my highschool days, cause honestly they were the peak of stability in my life everything after that has been a rollercoaster. Loved getting to know about british schools and your experience :D
I work in a secondary school in London, I can confirm: this is what they look like. The one I'm teaching at has the exact same style, especially those green chairs and tables are on point.
i cut classes a lot in senior year just bc seniors were given an open campus (seniors could leave during a free period and for lunch) and i felt as though a lot of my classes were useless. also it was really easy to get excused from class, you could call the front office and pretend to be a parent and call yourself out for a dentist appointment when you were really getting boba, it was great.
Yes there’s a ‘temporary’ block with Geography and History in my secondary school that has bendy walls and rats constantly dieing under it! For some reason everything was blue too, chairs, floors, carpets, a random wall or two and those plasticky blinds that always get stuck. The American lockers always seem so great as you get a whole strip to yourself, here in England there are usually strips with about 4 smaller lockers per vertical row and woe betide you if you got the bottom locker (as I did D:)
feeling ya girl. Struggeling with borderline and even though my doctors told me to just drug me down and stop working. I refused. Working hard, a high manager now at a big brand. But still every night crying, laughing, coping with being me. Love seeing you still record and putting yourself out there, while struggeling. So much respect! 🙌🏼
its so funny that they're called mobiles in the UK, they're called portables in the us. both words based on the buildings being movable despite the buildings literally never moving lmao
at my school (uk) we called them temporary class rooms and were in fact never temporary
The crates? In Finland we just call them crates.
We used to have these tiny blue shipping crate things outside of our student services/ nurse office are where you go when you had a panic attack, one of the teachers reversed a van into one I was in once
My school had a row of "temporary" classrooms that hung around 12yrs until they finally fell apart.
My school called them "the huts" (I'm South of England)
Love seeing the similarities to Aus high school. Always double desks, always with the transportables. Our isolation was called the “withdrawal” room. The amount of times I got sent there just to get some peace 😌
Aussie schools are, generally, a lot of outdoor space cause we have the climate for it. We don't have indoor eating areas, you sit outside at benchs/tables/on the ground and our tuckshop/canteen is generally a building with some service windows and line guides out the front.
Pretty much every subject has their own building unless its a multilevel building but none of them are connected, you'll just have undercover walkways between them. Our halls are multipurpose, generally no bleachers, it might have a stage and we have assemblies there (sitting on the floor) but its mainly for sport and sometimes the performing arts. We will have a dedicated library building as well, generally some of the nicest spaces on campus.
As for seating arrangements, it really depends on the teacher, some like horizontal lines, some like pairs, some like groups, some like u shapes, some like curved amphitheatre type arrangements, some like aeroplane style arrangements. But all the teachers who use that room have to agree on an arrangement.
Staffrooms differ, some are really nice with loads of windows and a nice view and others are like little dungeons.
In Poland we have desks for two students placed usually in three rows. If we do the group work we're grouped in two-desks in the same row - students from more front desk just turn around and face the pair behind them. Or we just move around the room with or without our chairs.
As for the lockers, many schools started to introduce them when I was finishing education in both middle and high school. Before that we had those big spaces in the basement to hang clothes in (coats in winter etc) and they weren't locked, so honestly anyone could enter those. Each class (because classes are fixed here and we're the same group of students throughout all the years at specific school) had its own dressing room. When I was in middle school I got tired of carrying 15kg of books every day so I put a box with my name in my class' basement space and just left some there. You could say I started a trend because soon after my classmates started doing the same and other classes followed suit too.
But then they filled those spaces with lockers and we had to buy locks and put our many things in those tiny spaces and everything got bad after that so. Fuck lockers I guess. Had to go back to carrying tons of books of my back every day in winter because damn things were just too small to put everything in - and we had to share the locker in pairs, so even less space. Especially when we had to change shoes from outdoor ones to school (clean and dry) ones. Everything in the locker was so damp and gross in winter, ugh.
almost exact situation is in russian schools! none of the schools have lockers so my back and shoulders would always hurt because of the damn books. and yeah, changing shoes in winter was a mess and a pain in the ass haha
I'm in the UK and my school was similar, though a lot bigger. In classes we sat in tables of 2, though occasionally we moved tables around for group work, but the majority of the time it was either individual or pair work. And thanks for your skiving story, it makes me feel a lot better about the time I tried to skive off a lesson (I was one of those goody 2 shoes students, but I really hated the teacher) in the bathrooms (back before they were locked during lessons), sitting in a cubicle by myself trying to be silent. After 15 mins I got bored and went to 'isolation' classroom (I know we didn't call it that, but it was where students that were sent out of class, and those on suspension went), though I had to ask at reception where it was, and honestly they had no idea what to do with me so I just sat and did homework. I now know I'm autistic and this experience now makes a lot more sense.
For group work with desks we just put the desks in a circle! Also my high school had a variety of desks and tables, usually English and Science had tables and other classes like math had desks
To answer your desk question we had to drag the desk around the classroom for group stuff and form the most chaotic, pain in the behind, space gobbling desk monster possible. Moving single desk around was always a huge pain especially if the group was more than 4 people/desks
Ugh yes, and then the teacher would get pissy cause the desks weren't in straight rows at the end of class.
When i went to school here in Australia, the desks in primary school (Prep to grade 6/7) were often arranged in goofy layouts like L shapes and big court room square vibes, but then in high school it was more a few desks in a row with some classrooms having tall benches like the art rooms and the science rooms, where you sat 4 to 6 people facing each other. But then there were still some class rooms with whacky layouts too XD
when we had group projects we'd push the desks next to each other with the most horrific screeching you've ever heard
My American experience is that we rarely had single desks, especially in middle and high school. We usually had those tables that two people sit at and sometimes they would smush two of those tables together so it’s like 4 people
When I was in 1st grade, the desks in my classroom were U shaped and there were a few more desks in the middle of the U, and the teacher made the naughty kids go to the middle so they'd feel judged by everyone looking at them LMAO looking back it was pretty fucked.
Also, in primary school we had music class in a container. Yes, like the ones in Eco Lifestyle, winter wasn't very fun LMFAO
We love you Jesse🥺 you’re so amazing and you always brighten everyone’s day, I’m really sorry about your grandad, you matter and you’re worthy❤️
In Elementary school we're grouped in classes but spend like 80% in the same classroom only changing rooms for specialized classes (think P.E.). Students have individual desks to stash their materials in and the teacher just has students move/rearrange desks as needed.
In High school/Secondary school, each student has an individualized schedule and change rooms between subjects. classrooms usually have a bunch of desks which the teachers arrange as needed. A couple of my classes had tables.
In Poland most schools up to high school have desk for 2 students, so you sit in pairs (sometimes it's a bigger desk, for 3-4 students, but mostly there are 2 people desks and you have to share). Also school is usually just one big building, no extra blocks.
Also often the building are historical and had different purpose in the past (for example, my primary school was a temporary hospital building during II World War).
Me, an American fully, getting my "Heartstopper" fix by vicariously living through Plumbella's build and stories xD
Heart stopper actually felt very Americanised, I kept forgetting that it was meant to be British. The authentic British school experience is more like in the inbetweeners
You mentioning about “Temp 1” being burnt down reminds me of my temp block, no fire but we did have two guys try and nick the copper and any loose fixtures off the temp buildings late at night. They got it all off then left it all next to the side gate/fencing besides the block when they were getting chased out (there was legit a police station attached to the front of the school). Stupidly they came back a few days later during school time to get it in their van saying they were asked by school to move it so students don’t get hurt, one guy lifted a pipe then lost hold on it not realising there was a f**k off nail at the top went into the other guys head. Seriously wish I was joking!, all students in class next to it (I was one of them) watching out the windows teacher trying to evacuate the class, someone fainted whole situation. Police came to the scene and recognised the two of them! Such a weird situation! Ps our temp classes where language, health and social care, reshape and R.E!!
Omg what a story xD this could easily have happened in my school
Oh my god thats insane!!!
We had a “temporary” drama hut, a ridiculous amount of stairs to get up to the English block and a tiny little sixth form art room that was BOILING in the summer, the roof tiles would start to lift off when it was windy and then it would flood in the rain. British high school ❤️😂
We also had mixed year group forms 😊
I know a lot of Americans have already commented, but my experience with class seating was dependent on your age and teacher's preferences. From grades 1-4, we kept our individuals desks arranged either in a U shape or in small groups of four. Desks were separated only for standardized test weeks. In grades 5 onward our individual desks were kept separated, but we could move our desks and chairs as needed whenever group projects came up. During these grade levels, I only ever experienced tables for desks in art and computer classes. In high school/college most of my classes continued using individual desk seating, I had tables only in science, art, and computers. At university I mostly had individual desks again. My language and writing classes prioritized positioning them in a U or circle shape. My science classes used individual desks during daily classes but tables during the weekly labs. My computer course used individual desks iirc. Since all university students were provided with a laptop as part of tuition, tables were not necessary.
My school combined 2 of the classic British school themes: the red brick converted ww2 hospital built around a central quadrangle for upper school; and the ubiquitous concrete block for lower school. Both were obviously a delight
So sorry to hear you're having a hard time and about the loss of your granddad. Take good care of yourself, Jessie.
out of every american school i've gone to, we rarely actually had separated desks! a lot of teachers choose to group students at a single, larger table that can seat maybe 4-6 people, so it's not that far off! And, when we are working at single desks, we would physically group the single desks together during group assignments.
In Canada, we call 'mobiles' 'portables' at school. My elementary school had 3 but my high school had none...no one wanted to be in the portables cause then you had to get your snow boots on just to go to the bathroom in the main building...
Same here! I was lucky that I went to the newest high school in my district so the school was underpopulated, although every other high school had portables.
Same in the US!
we called them portables too. I had one in 4th grade, it was the worst because we had to go outside to get to the bathroom in the main building lol
I'm in Canada too, portables were part of every school I went to. Single desks mostly, we'd push them together for group work.
Because of the size of America, the slang we use for things is widely different. My region calls it skipping class, my school district actually has a 'senior skip day' where all the 12th graders (we call them seniors as in senior classmen) just don't show up to school, at all. They don't call out sick or anything, they just stay home or hang out with friends away from campus.
In my Highschool we had either circles or Hexagons to sit at and if you didn't want to sit looking at everyone else at your table then you could pop a squat and work on the floor
Finally someone who built a school I can relate to. lol Kids these days and their apparently nice schools. I can't wait to get my hands on this pack and build my early 2000's high school complete with underfunded arts department and brick cement walls.
😂👍 me too! Fond memories of the underfunded arts class wearing men's old shirts as aprons and sharing a lump of clay..good times.
@@islaintheshire you had shirt aprons? We just got clay on our overpriced sweaters while our art teacher showed us Rocky Horror and told us about how she used to be a nun but now had two boyfriends
@@rosesupposessims2910 yes old shirt aprons, I loved mine lol! Your art teacher sounds amazing 😂
It really depends on the teacher, like generally in high school and middle school you have your own desks but they might be pushed together in groups of four or two. In my philosophy class in high school we even put them in a big circle for seminars. If there was group work we would just push the desks together or maybe even go outside and sit on the grass or at the lunch tables. In elementary school there were definitely more teachers who pushed the desks together or had large tables, but since we only had one teacher all year in elementary school our desks usually opened through the top or through the side and you would keep all your stuff in there. Science classrooms generally had the layout you designed for the UK classrooms. Basically, each teacher would choose and it usually depended on which subject it was and how often there would be group work. Also there were a lot of teachers who would be like “ask your seat partner ‘____’” if the desks were in groups or “ask the person to your left ‘___’” if they weren’t, so we would always have to interact with the people next to us even if we weren’t in groups. Anyways I went way too into detail with this and I don’t even know if it made any sense, but hopefully it helps?
Oh also this is my experience in various schools across california specifically, I didn’t go to school outside of the state at any point so this is my narrow scope.
yesss i am so happy someone built a british school, it looks a lot like my old school
To answer your question as an American we would push the single desks together in a circle or like facing each other for group work and push them back when we were done. We also had rectangle desks too! I honestly hated those because I was shy and they forced you to socialize lol
I’m from the Netherlands and in elementary school we had tables grouped together like the rectangle you explained; those seats were usually assigned. In middle school/high school (? the school system in the Netherlands is so different idk wtf all your schools are) it was pretty much the same. They tried to assign the seats as well but its kids aged 12-18 so in the end they gave up on that. In college the tables were placed in rows of three, so you weren’t sitting alone either. The American school experience honestly looks like permanent detention to me 🥲
This is deffo a northern school! In Devon nearly every secondary school was knocked down from 2000-2006 and re built and have the same aesthetic (Modern and open spaces) I’ve never heard of a ‘mobile’ before! Really interesting to see how schools differ x
Some schools in the US have those “mobiles,” too, but where I lived we called them “portables!” Both elementary schools (these encompass ages 5-11) I went to had several of them. It’s definitely an interesting experience to go to class in them, since it’s essentially going to school in a trailer. The mobiles in this video brought back a lot of memories lol
This really reminds me of my high school on the IOW in the south, but then again, the island is about 20 years behind the rest of the UK so maybe it's different in the rest of the south xD
In my high school, we mostly had either separate desks or we had tables where two to four students sat. Most of my educational experience had a mix of group tables and individual desks. I think the individual desks were to keep kids from cheating or talking in class too much, not that it really worked.
The seating always depended on the teacher for me. A lot of my science rooms had tables instead of single desks, my history teacher liked us all facing each other for discussions. When we had group work & single desks we would push desks together
We had temporary classrooms (which housed RS and PSHE) ... they were colloquially known as "the sheds" ... they arrived in 2000, and to my knowledge, they're still there to this day!
I'm from Finland and the desks are usually singular desks, but depending on the teacher they are arranged into squares, u-shapes, and usually just lines or pairs of two. my friends and I would always pick desks near eachother
Thank you ahhh! I'm from NZ but this is so much more accurate to my high school experience than the US-themed default
Im german but i relate to this layout of the school so much more it has as my school has no single tables different buildings and is also old
Got to say i got amusement from you saying one of your transportable building's burnt down. At my high school our front office and several classrooms were burnt in the main building... and it says everything about how underprivllaged my school was that it was just boarded off, never fixed. Also as an Australian your school seems so much more familiar to me than the American ones. Also, i'm sorry about your grandfather.
I'm from Sydney Australia I've seen this happen to a high school a friend went to
It's so interesting hearing what schooling details were like for other countries. Apart from the desk situation, in Australia at my public high school we had houses that each had a corresponding colour and name (ours were named after white colonists 💀), but they were really only relevant for sporting days and we didn't have a house points system, probably because behaviour issues at the school were so rampant that a house points system would have just made things unnecessarily complicated. Each house had a boy house captain and a girl house captain, and we also had general school captains that were elected via campaign and vote (again, a boy and girl, with a boy and a girl deputy as well). We didn't have showers after PE (phys ed) but we did change into PE uniform (I HATED the texture of those shorts they haunt me to this day). We weren't a super fancy school, we were very much the local "feral" school aka the school with the lowest SES, and we didn't get a lot of funding.
I think at private schools in the state it differs a bit and the house system is a slightly bigger deal. We had a huge rivalry with a private school nearby and students were constantly getting into fights after school because we shared some of the same bus stops. They would basically shout classist shit at us and then we would get unnecessarily violent in response. At one point it got so cartoonishly out of control that a group of students from the private school bought uniforms for our school (we had cheap uniforms specifically chosen so that the families could afford them, you could get a shirt and shorts at a local shop for like $15), and sneaked into the school at lunchtime *to enter our krumping competition* to try to show us up there. (Yes, we had krumping competitions every Wednesday during lunch in the school gym, it was 2009.) One of our school captains got elected by landslide majority after he gave an impassioned speech about how we might not have the funds, and we might not get the best grades, and we might be poor, feral, and stinky, but we would still always better than [private school].
New Zealand college/high school is more like British high school with houses, prefects, head pupils etc. but we had singular lightweight desks that could easily be rearranged into group settings (which you were most likely to get shoved in with a kid you didn’t get on with.) My school was a newly created combined co-Ed and had half new buildings and half old buildings, which was quite odd, and our music class was in a small chapel. We had two options for instruments: drums or guitar, and I wanted something more classical/orchestral to learn. Ironically, I am now a proud drummer and percussionist.
Edit: We call skipping school “wagging.” Never did it.