A Well Rounded Learning Environment: Brian Staveley Turns Yurt into Classroom

When Upper School English Teacher Brian Staveley discovered he was going to be displaced from his classroom because of the School's building and renovation project, he and his students simply took matters into their own hands—literally. They built a yurt.

Originating in Mongolia as an efficient and portable housing solution for the indigenous nomadic peoples who lived there, yurts are still widely used today. Staveley encountered many examples during a summer trip to Mongolia, and took the design ideas back to BB&N with him.

In collaboration with Woodworking Teacher Paul Ruhlmann and with help from various students and teachers, Staveley built the yurt before school began this fall. Sitting in what would be deep right center field of the baseball diamond, it has become an accepted, albeit odd, addition to the landscape.

“Having class in a yurt allows students to participate in the actual environment of their education,” Staveley says. “You're still clearly ‘in school', but you emotionally inhabit the yurt more than a classroom—it helps that most of the kids in my class pitched in to build it.”

Round in shape, and decorated sparsely with authentic Mongolian artifacts such as prayer flags and a horse blanket, Staveley's classroom feels like an inviting, oversized tent. Insulating, windproof material rests on a wooden deck and frame, and a metal cable circling the walls connects to many narrow support beams which meet at a sunroof atop a canopied ceiling.

As Senior students for Staveley's World Religion class trickle in on a warm fall afternoon, most are genuinely happy about their temporary classroom, or at the most, impartial.

“It's different…it kind of makes sense if you know Mr. Staveley,” says Max Tenaglia '07. “He's a great teacher—I'd have class with him anywhere.”

But it isn't only the architecture or the building process that foster the yurt's comfortable feel, Staveley's teaching style has much to do with it. The Dartmouth graduate with an M.A. in Creative Writing runs his class with a unique and open style which students love.

As students sit casually on folding chairs and tables in a rough circle, Staveley pulls a chair out towards the middle of the yurt and begins a discussion on Hinduism. It is the first of seven religions the class will study this fall (the others being Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) before moving to current topics in religion this spring.

“The homework tonight is to read the entire Bhagavad Gita,” announces Staveley.

“No, are you serious!?” a collective sigh goes up.

“Funny game, just kidding,” cracks Staveley. The class exhales in relieved laughter, but Staveley has already moved onto the lesson, beginning a discussion on a passage from the Hindu holy text.

The subject matter often veers towards the abstract and challenging so Staveley has a map of sorts he uses to run his class, an outline of talking points that he hopes to hit, although he rarely has to refer to it. In most instances the students hit the points on their own, and he only needs to steer the conversation towards the more relevant topics.

Staveley often poses a question and sits back to listen, giving the class the freedom to explore ideas as they formulate answers. Occasionally, however, the conversation strays too far off-course.

“Okay, I'm going to answer this question because I'm starting to get a migraine,” jokes Staveley, interrupting a discussion about whether or not humans are predisposed to believe in gods.

Often there are no concrete answers to the issues raised, but according to Staveley, the discourse is the crux of the learning process and what he hopes to encourage. Keeping the atmosphere light when discussing such weighty material occasionally takes on some unexpected forms.

During a discussion about “Tamas”—one of the inherent tendencies of the mind according to the Hindu faith—the class is having difficulty understanding the term. Loosely translated, “Tamas” speaks to a negative inertia, or inactiveness, and Staveley asks his students to give an example.

“A pen is an example of Tamas,” says one student. “A non-moving inertia.”

“Except when it's moving,” Staveley quips, hurling a pen across the yurt in support of his point.

Although the students may not grasp every concept, they are fully engaged and clearly captivated by Staveley's approach. Because of the subject matter, his World Religion class tends to be more free-flowing than some of Stavelely's other classes, but his approach to teaching is consistent.

“I try to make it as organic as possible without devolving into utter chaos,” says Staveley. A little chaos, however, seems to suit most classes in the yurt just fine.

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