Review: Classroom Portraits

Classroom Portraits by Julian Germain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I suppose this book is more fascinating to me, because I am a teacher and now a substitute teacher. The book is a series of photographs of classrooms and their students in nineteen countries around the world. I am fascinated by classrooms and have been them, as a student, a teacher, or just as a visitor in 3 different countries. Within the US, I have taught in four different states, a dozen or so school districts, and hundreds of classrooms.

I will probably look through this book many times, but on my first time through, I was curious about two main things: the number of students in the classes and whether you could tell anything about the students in the classes from their portraits. Specifically, as I looked through, I would count the students first. The class sizes ranged from four to over fifty.

Then, I would look through the students and pick out two or three from the class that I would be interested in getting to know better. Which kids seem to tell a fascinating story with their faces, their dress, their body posture? Some kids seem to hide any hint of their personalities; others can't seem to hold their personalities in. Most American kids, if not told otherwise, would have had big grins on their faces. Most of the students in these pictures did not have huge smiles. I would guess the photographer must have told the kids to look natural and not to smile specifically for the picture. But I don't know. Maybe the students in other countries don't normally smile for pictures; maybe they take school more seriously and don't consider this portraiture to be a subject for merriment.

Of course, there are many other things that show in the pictures and which I plan to take a closer look at the next time through: the types of buildings, the things on the walls, the types of desks or seating arrangements, the uniforms or lack thereof, the hairstyles, the diversity or lack thereof racially, ethnically, gender-wise, ability/disability. I was glad to see that the photographer also included several classes for differently-abled students. Some classes appear to be multi-aged; others less so.

And a final puzzle: why was the book of Narnia shown in the photo of the class studying religion in Qatar?




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