The Blackboard

For a while now I've been wanting to get into posting more regularly here, but everything always seems to be "go, go, go!" with one urgent task after another, and never any time to sit down and reflect, so I've had trouble finding the time for it. But I keep coming across these little discoveries or insights, and I'd like to record some of them here, to the best of my ability.

Hang on, my breakfast burrito is done in the microwave. This is important.

...

Okay, we can continue now. The question of course, is where to even begin. Pedagogy? The students? The school? The content?

Typically I would like to use my first regular post to do an overview, but there's so much to consider that even a weak attempt at an overview would fall well short of the mark while simultaneously being beyond the scope of a short blog post--as limited by the fact that my class starts in 25 minutes.

So instead, today, like future days (at least, according to plan), I'll focus on a single small aspect of the classroom. Today, I'd like to touch on the blackboard.

In the back of my classroom, there's a chalk board that I don't use for my teaching. It's behind all the students, I don't like using chalk anyway, and leaving it blank gives the students a space to express themselves. Inevitably it quickly becomes filled: names, dates, graffiti, and art seems to pop up there like mushrooms after rain.

Today, there is a work of art by one of the students, apparently from Nightmare Before Christmas. It's a beautiful swirling piece, with a couple standing on top of a jack-o-lantern hill. On the left side is a quickly drawn ghost haunting a house (we're approaching Halloween now) and below that the words, "Pray for Ronnie, I know you'll make it through this!" next to some graffiti. Given that at least two of my students have friends who have died of gunshot wounds, and at least two of my students have been injured by serious stabbing wounds, whatever risk Ronnie is in may be very serious.

I enjoy seeing what comes up on the board, both as works of art in their own right, and as expressions of my students thoughts and interests.

However, this question is not just one of aesthetic interest, it's also a question of practice: often the illustrations and words that appear there are, to put it mildly, not school-appropriate. Graffiti is especially challenging, as it's nearly indecipherable to my untrained eye. The stylized marks and letters, combined with a shorthand unique to that subculture, make it completely impenetrable to me.

Yesterday another teacher came into the room and gasped at what she saw in graffiti in the wall. Apparently it included things like, "kill the police" and other messages that she did not find appropriate.

So where do I draw the line? It seems unfair to ban anything I don't understand, and I want to make room for them to express themselves, but there are also certain expectations I must hold up as a teacher.

I think, as a practice for this blog, I'll be satisfied with raising a good question, even if I can't/don't answer it. So there it is.