ToolPorch / Classroom / Seating Chart
Seating Chart Maker that respects your rules
Shuffle the room in one click — with the pairs that can't sit together kept apart automatically, and a printable chart for the sub tray.
Why "random with rules" beats both alternatives
Hand-placing every seat takes twenty minutes and quietly encodes your assumptions about who belongs where. Pure random placement takes one second and reliably seats the two chattiest kids side by side on the first try. The useful middle is random placement with a small set of hard rules: type the pairs that genuinely can't be neighbors, and let chance handle everything else. Students perceive it as fair — because it is — and you keep the two constraints that actually matter.
"Apart" here means not adjacent in any of the eight surrounding seats, so a kept-apart pair won't end up side by side, front-to-back, or diagonal. Manual swaps after the shuffle are yours to make; the tool won't fight you.
The sub-tray print
Print gives you the grid only — names in boxes, front-of-room marker, no interface — which is exactly the artifact a substitute needs and the thing most seating tools bury behind an account. Charts save on your device per class, so re-printing in November takes two clicks.
Frequently asked questions
How do I fix a seat the shuffle got wrong?
Click one seat, then click another — they swap. Keep-apart rules aren’t re-checked on manual swaps, because you outrank the rules.
Can I keep two students away from each other?
Yes — add one pair per line like Maya + Jaden before shuffling. The generator reshuffles until no keep-apart pair is in adjacent seats (side-by-side, in front/behind, or diagonal), and tells you honestly if your room layout makes that impossible.
What about empty desks?
If the grid has more seats than students, the extras render as empty desks, spread evenly through the room rather than clumped in the back.
Can I print it?
Yes — the Print button gives you just the chart, no interface, sized to a sheet. Tape it to the podium for the sub.
Is my roster uploaded anywhere?
No. Rosters and charts are saved in your browser on your device, shared with the other ToolPorch classroom tools, and never sent to us.