180 Days

I am a teacher.

I’ve been teaching ninth grade history and geography for eighteen years. When I tell people that I’m a teacher the reactions vary…

“Wow, you’re brave, I could never do that.”
“Thank you!”
“I’m sorry.”
or
“You’re trying to corrupt those young minds.”

It’s always fascinating to me that everyone has an opinion on teaching, yet many people haven’t been in a classroom since they were in school themselves. This was the reason that I wanted to do this project. At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, I was struggling with the news and some of the negative stories I’d seen relating to education. I found that many of these articles lacked the perspective of the average classroom teacher, so I decided that I wanted to document what goes on in the school where I teach. I got permission from the administration and the faculty and set out to take pictures around the school every day for a whole academic year (despite my best efforts, I did miss a day or two), focusing on the teachers and activities as much as possible, while not showing the faces of the students. As I went around the building before school, after school, and during my planning period, I got the opportunity to pop in and visit other teachers and see lessons which interested and inspired me. Frequently, we are so busy at work that we never get out of our classrooms or offices and we aren’t able to see what’s going on in other classes. Plus, it might seem odd for a history teacher to show up in a another class, but doing the project gave me justification for popping in for “Fire Fridays” in the Chemistry classes, card tricks to teach statistics, and fetal pig dissection. As I shared the pictures daily with the faculty and staff I received a lot of positive feedback. People enjoyed getting a chance to see what happened outside their little corner of the building. This is the collection of these photos.