I flipped the light switch in the darkened room as I have hundreds of times before, school day after school day. I look around at the off white walls, probably painted that way because some educational expert said this shade was soothing and invoked a positive learning environment among those who enter here. I find it boring and institutional. Cinder block is cinder block; you can’t do much with it; paint only covers the gray. The custodial staff did their job last night. The floor has been swept and the desks are arranged neatly in their tidy linear rows. The floor shines from the recent summer’s waxing. This will fade as the year progresses. It’s quiet now. The only noise is the hum of the ventilator which circulates air in this windowless room. I shouldn’t say it’s windowless. There is one window which looks into a storage area which the staff seems to feel is its own dumping grounds. Various announcements, menus, posters with random information is hung around the room. The chalkboards in the front and back are green, and a third is a charcoal gray. It becomes obvious that over time this room has evolved with the various building and renovation projects the school has known throughout the years. A large white Smart Board faces the class of empty seats. An antiquated and unused television from the old channel one days seems perched from the wall in the front of the room, while wires hand like vine from the ceiling and walls where the new technology has found its way into the life of this room. Piles of books and papers inhabit the flat surfaces while other books line the shelves below the lone gray chalkboard. The glow from the fluorescent lights contributes to the institutional feel. Brackets from past movie sceens protrude from the front wall, reminders of a time of film strips and record players and 16mm movies. Now we are laptops and internet and SmartBoards and wireless routers. Are we smarter? Are we educating better? Looking ten years into the future, what will we see in this room? Students? Or perhaps just a teacher and a computer connected to students who are at home, working through material at their own pace? Who knows.

I wrote this as a rough copy example for Comp 101.

Check out the cake below. Communication. A wonderful thing.