When I was considering how to create an article for the current round of the #samebutdifferent challenge, I realized it wouldn't be so simple.
Photographing into a school class during operation? If I were a teacher or other school employee, it wouldn't be a problem. But an ordinary person can't easily get into school classrooms. I also don't have school-age children, so it would be difficult to find a reasonable excuse to visit a school. And explaining to the school principal that I just need to take photos for a blog article? That never even crossed my mind. There must be another solution.
In our city, there's a museum dedicated to Jan Amos Comenius, who is called the "teacher of nations". (By the way – does anyone outside the Czech Republic know Jan Amos Comenius?) And in this museum, there are examples of what school classrooms looked like in the Middle Ages, in the nineteenth century, and even in the mid-twentieth century. But these are museum exhibits. And I wanted an example from the present, some current classroom.
| 17th century | 19th century | mid-20th century |
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Photos: muzeum J.A.Komenského, Přerov (prerovmuzeum.cz)
In the end, one thing helped me: the Parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic. Specifically, some school classrooms were transformed into polling stations. And as a member of the election committee, I gained access to them.
So what does a randomly selected, average classroom in the Czech Republic look like? The capacity is somewhere between twenty and thirty students. Students sit in several rows, at desks in pairs. As you can observe, the classic black chalkboard with chalk has been replaced by a white board written on with erasable markers. It's not visible in the photo, but a data projector is installed on the ceiling, and the teacher has a computer or laptop available.
This is an elementary school classroom, but if I remember correctly, just a few years ago I was attending parent-teacher conferences at the high school where my sons were studying, and it looked quite similar.
So - this is more or less what classrooms look like in the Czech Republic. Want to know what they're like in other parts of the world? Spread the word about the #samebutdifferent challenge and share how ordinary things look in extraordinary places. 😊
