publications

“Students” and “Teachers” navigate school on opposite ends of physical and imagined borders: Teacher stands | student sits; Teacher makes rules | student obeys; Teacher knows | student learns. These borders stifle opportunities for shared experience and perspective-building, and continuously reinforce the hierarchical relationship between student | teacher. When trying to confront these divides, what are the possibilities and limitations of building a “we” among educators and students both inside and outside the classroom? How can we use photography, video, sound, and multimedia to explore the possibilities and limitations of an “us” in the classroom? How much richer can relationships grow when we share personal stories through images and sound of our out-of-school lives in the classroom? And to what extent can this artistic blurring of teacher | student borders transform education? This chapter, devised by a “teacher” and “student” who worked together over the course of a year to develop a collaborative practice of “we-making,” explores how art practice, and particularly collaborative art practice, opens up opportunities for classroom community members to make meaning of the world together and actively, imperfectly, dissolve these borders.