Classroom Environment v.2

Jan 30, 2018
2 min read

Wednesday January 30th: (518 days since v.1)

It's 24 degrees outside, snow flurries last night, I'm hoping for more tonight.

12:14 PM, Advanced Digital Art class is in full swing.

The empty, cold, sterile of 518 days ago is LONG gone. Cold inside, warm inside.

Students are working, learning, creating.

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.

The life is here. The students question why I am having other students take pictures of the class. They question why I am taking notes as I move around the room. They move around the room. They have a large art project due tomorrow so students are working on various devices, media, and stations around the room. Organized chaos.

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 is a choice based approach to digital art exploration. I have roughly 165 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.

So what has changed in the last 518 days:

- my student numbers have gone up (Amazon has moved in and our district numbers are on the rise, meaning increased classroom sizes)

- my students (especially in the Advanced Digital Art class) are beginning to focus more on meaning making and finding their artistic voice

- collaboration happens more organically, this doesn't become a forced "grouping" but instead evolves through the class as students specialize and report to each other.

- technology has evolved as well, both the technology I have access to and the ones that I am allowing students to bring in and utilize while we work

- the art and artists shown in and around my room have become much more intentional, after doing inventory of the artwork hung in my room, I noticed they didn't match my ideas so I reworked what was on my walls

- student ownership, I have attempted to give up control of pieces of my art room, student led exercises, peer collaboration, and independent assignments outside the curriculum mean I have less control but the students learn and interact more