#the classroom

[femmesandhoney]

why do so many refuse to believe kids reading less is a root cause of the many educational backslides we've been seeing. you could have the world's best teacher in front of the most receptive child, but if that child doesn't read and doesn't wanna read, their ability to produce meaningful and accurate written work in response will plummet. how is that shocking or debatable news.

[walls-to-the-ball]

Hicham Benohoud from his series "The Classroom" 1994 and 2002

[katherinelee1369]

(via https://comic.studio/s/27443)

Skit 5: Harmless Shenanigans - The Classroom

[plokster]

Recently I've been using Backloggd (Letterbox for video games) and noticed they were missing a lot of Flash games from my childhood. So I've been submitting some to add to the database.

Lots of the more obscure ones don't have much promo art to work with and the covers usually have to be in 3:4 format, so I decided to make a few from scratch! For full disclosure, lots of tracing was involved, but it was done within the interest of keeping them as authentic-looking as possible.

[dagwolf]

Notes on teaching in these times

1. As a high school teacher, I find it evermore depressing to have to consider what I’d do should an armed assailant attack my school. I’m often left numb after considering I’d do anything to protect my students and could very well likely never see my own kids again. My kids. And then there’s the fact that I send my own kids to school each day and how are they being protected crosses my mind. This inevitable thought process drives anxiety. The potential for violence is unsettling. We had a kid bring a gun to school this year, so it’s right there. I can only describe the effect it has had on us as a growing dread we tend not to publicly acknowledge.

2. I want to point out how the present demand and growing desire to protect my students feeds into an authoritarian vision of the school, a vision I work very hard to disrupt. This breaking down the problem and critically considering it with an eye on authority is important for me whenever I think about teaching. I might find a way to consider how the reactionary violence intends to direct how I should consider the problem it presents.

3. There are social demands for me as a teacher. The teacher should lead. The teacher should protect. Patriarchy is invoked here. I am the man who should courageously protect the classroom because I am the teacher. Selflessness is tied up with gendered expectations. What should I do? The ethics here are problematic because the way I want to think about school opposes the way society presents school. (Protecting the students certainly means protecting from harm but it also means protecting the foundations of our nation.) For me, rather than quietly and obediently reflecting on what I should do as the teacher and as a man, I feel I should work hard to cooperate with students to confront any given situation with them in a manner that reinforces the community we struggle to build in spite of all the obstacles that are stacked before us. 

4. How do I step out of the front of the classroom (a state-sponsored and -fabricated social space) and into the middle of the spaces we create in various classrooms in spite of the state and its expectations, and in spite of this potential violence. After all, and experienced teachers know this whether or not they appreciate it, unique space is being created in each classroom. Many teachers try to control that process to replicate their ideal classrooms. Many teachers like to own that space. Others have learned they can work in media res with students to construct and compose a more [insert your fave adjective here that reps just and equitable] space. I want to stay away from the word democratic here: the democratic classroom is a buzzphrase these days. Perhaps, I should use dynamic. The teacher-owned classroom spaces are static. There’s a primary opposition here.

5. How can I work on building community in the midst of such prevailing violence that seems to have become an integral force in our everyday lives? How can I persist in anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-traditional teaching? The prevailing violence seems punitive; it is composed, as far as I am concerned, on behalf of the prevailing social order in the United States.

[julietao]

me as Taylor in the webseries "The Classroom"

[landscape-stories]

Hicham Benohoud – The Classroom

The Classroom by photographer Hicham Benohoud stages surreal school portraits critiquing postcolonial Moroccan identity through absurdity an

LS NEW BOOK

Hicham Benohoud - The Classroom

landscapestories.net

The Classroom explores control and discipline within post-colonial Moroccan identity through staged, uncanny classroom images created between 1994 and 2002.

Frustrated by Morocco’s rigid educational system of the 1990s, art teacher Hicham Benohoud used photography as a pedagogical tool, creating a makeshift darkroom in his classroom to foster collaborative and hands-on learning, encouraging students to engage with creativity and identity.

The resulting images created with his students are marked by tension and alienation, blending absurdity, humour, and unease in their exquisitely framed and obliquely disarming compositions. In juxtaposing the monotony of the classroom with a visual exploration of both freedom and control, The Classroom builds a playful and existential critique of postcolonial identity, where childlike creative gestures merge into a more ambiguous aesthetic that hints at oppression, violence and isolation.

This new publication by Loose Joints draws from the artist's original archive of negatives from the time, building the first comprehensive appraisal of Benohoud’s ground-breaking series while highlighting the modern relevance of the work in its engagement with performance, politics, pedagogy and the body decades ahead of its time.