Classroom Environment
Wednesday July 27th:
The little widget on my phone says it’s 85 degrees outside with 73% humidity. Wind:3.2mph from the WNW…gross.
My classroom is COLD. My bare toes are little icicles wiggling in my sandals trying to warm up. The room smells off too. Too clean. Too bare. Empty. Quiet. Cold.
I love my classroom. I love the space and the environment that it creates. It is usually very busy, very loud, and very warm. Thirty computers on 10 tables, nine art tables, and [almost] sixty stools crowd the room. Thirty students give the room life.
Today the only thing missing are the students. Today my classroom hibernates.
August 23rd, the classroom will start to wake up.
I teach digital art at the middle school level but I have a lot of analog art that we create as well. I teach two main courses, one focusing on Photoshop and the other becomes an almost TAB approach to digital art exploration. I have roughly 150 students throughout the day, every day, for a semester at a time. Being middle school students, these students are clumsy, smelly, and hilarious. I have always thought of my classroom as an organic being. The students and I bring it to life while we create and move through and around it.
