Lost in the Middle

Since the start of this academic school year I have been working part-time at a public middle school in Philadelphia. Through several partnerships and an education grant, I was assigned to teach video production and media literacy to students during and after school.
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Since the start of this academic school year I have been working part-time at a public middle school in Philadelphia. Through several partnerships and an education grant, I was assigned to teach video production and media literacy to students during and after school.

The school is Austin Meehan Middle School, and on my first day in October, I wasn't entirely sure I was at the correct place. While entering the asphalt-patched driveway, I saw a dull, lifeless building that could have been mistaken for a prison or an abandoned house on Tatooine. And it's not just me; students, teachers, and administrators have all been outspoken about the appearance of the school and its resemblances.

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2016-05-18-1463614597-5811945-ScreenShot20160518at10.44.06AM.png(Two images above: Betsy Manning; Google Maps)

The school was designed and built in the late 1960s by an architecture firm that must have been inspired by science fiction films and/or recreational drugs. (You can see some of their other designs here).

From above, it looks like a collection of planetary gears revolving around an incomplete decagon in the middle. This ten-sided structure is the library, or Instructional Materials Center (IMC), and connects each of the four gears, or houses. Just explaining this sounds confusing, and that's without even setting foot inside the school itself.

Each of the houses are connected by a maze of echoing stairwells and semicircle hallways that all look identical. There is a steep learning curve for navigating the school, and some students continue to get lost even by the end of the year.

Through the education grant, the school was selected to receive a small media lab, which included cameras, microphones, tripods, and other equipment dedicated to video production and editing. Since the library is a large and underutilized space it was given to me to run my media lab. Luckily for me, the library is also just a single stairway from the main entrance.

I was told that the school hadn't had a librarian in over five years, but I wouldn't be shocked if that number was doubled or tripled. A majority of the shelves are full of books, which have been sitting in their respective places long enough that their colors have faded from the skylights.

The room is mostly lit by natural light that comes in through the the handful of skylights that aren't covered in graffiti and the frosted windows draped in silky curtains. The honeycomb lighting fixture in the center of the room is more for its looks than its effectiveness.

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The library is one of the quietest places in the school, since the perimeter doors are locked to students and the only use has been for teachers using the shared copy machine or professional development meetings.

Between class periods, the library shelters me from the river of chaos that floods the hallways. I can hear high-pitched screams, smashing of metal lockers, and the occasional banging on the library doors from students trying to enter.

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A space that was originally meant to promote and share ideas has become a black hole in the center of these planetary gears. It has become a graveyard for class projects, old textbooks and obsolete technology.

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Even with the addition of a small media lab, the feeling of lost potential resonates within the room. Since the space was never designed for a media lab, the computers are daisy-chained by power strips to one of the few power outlets. It has become a clash of old versus new technology; an unfortunate reality of trying to modernize an out-dated space.

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Student drawings hang on the walls. Shoebox dioramas pile up in the corners. Stacks of magazines and chemistry equipment collect dust in the hidden closets and back spaces, next to the forgotten VHS tapes and boxy television sets.

From the architecture of the building, to details that make up the spaces within, this is just one story, in one school. It is a library of sad realities that are part of a much larger issue. My intention with this post is not to point a finger at someone or something. It is to share an experience that many people may not be familiar with, especially when it comes to this learning environment and how it has evolved over the years.

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