Room 306 at the Tobin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a typical-looking urban classroom: cinder-block walls, chalkboards, a computer station, formica tables, mismatched plastic chairs. The school building itself is the largest of thirteen elementary schools in the city, a sprawling two-and-a-half-story concrete structure built in 1972. It was intended to house 525 students, but it now serves over 750 in kindergarten through eighth grade. Room 306 might seem at first just a standard-issue classroom in a crowded city school. But there is nothing typical about what happens inside.

The twenty-two kids who belonged to Room 306 from September 1993 through June 1994--including our son, Sam-were fifth and sixth graders whose backgrounds and abilities, ideas and dreams were as diverse as their faces. Yet almost as soon as they walked into 306, this random little group began to build a strong common identity, an identity that becme the foundation for an exceptional year. The force that transformed this ordinary classroom, that galvanized a potentially discordant hodgepodge of kids and shaped the many kinds of learning that happened, was teacher Chris Affleck and her assistant Tim O'Connor.

As educators, as admirers, as artist and writer, as parents, we wanted to honor what went on in 306. Nicholas began photographing in the classroom in September, and by October he was spending four to six hours a day there, watching and making pictures. Later, I gathered notes and journals and recorded hours of conversations with students and teachers, parents and administrators. Reproduced here is a small selection made from the hundreds of photographs and pages of material we collected by the end of the year: the story of Room 306.
--Bebe Nixon

Matisse Michalski, 5th grade: A lot of pictures really show who people are. They show what people are like inside, what they're like and who they are. The pictures show the personality of the class really well, the class as a group of people, how we work together, that really shows. But we're each separate, and that shows, too.

Shavonne Reddick, 5th grade: I came into this class in the middle of the year, from the class next door. People thought it would be hard for me but it wasn't. I wanted to do it. In the other class the teachers were strict and the kids weren't very nice. I wanted to get out....Last year, I was silent. I didn't really talk. This year, I'm loud. I just go around the classroom dancing and singing. I'm happier, yeah. It's good in here. The class makes me feel I can speak what I want to speak, and not feel strange. I feel comfortable. I feel safe. I feel like I can trust everybody here. Everybody in the classroom is my friend, even if I didn't know them before I came here.

Chris Affleck, Teacher: It's really important at the beginning of the year to empasize social things and build a classroom community. You need to spend a lot of time doing it, and it's very hard because you're dying to get started and learn stuff. You need to come to a common understanding of things like "What are our hopes and dreams for ourselves? What are our rights and responsibilities as citizens of the world, of the school, of the classroom?"

One part of common understanding is personal stuff. The first project that we do is usually a personal time line, where you get to know a lot about the kids, where they get the sense that they personally are important. The first thing the kids learn here is that we think they are interesting and that we want to know about them. They get used to listening, and being listened to. They develop respect for conversation and the exchange of ideas and information. They learn about patience, and usually show an eagerness to share parts of themselves, and curiosity about the chance to find out new things from other kids. At this age they are becoming aware of the larger world, and they're starting to have interesting opinions about it, whether it's sports heroes or the death penalty, the latest gruesome local crime or school prayer. And hearing their classmates' opinions gives them a way to know other people in a different dimension from what they've known before.

The other part of common understanding is that there are rules, there are expectations, there are consequences, and we have to discuss these things so that it's really not taken for granted. Kids' creative energy is such a powerful force that teachers, myself included, are often scared of it, and with good reason. It can get out of hand, it really can. Sometimes, with some groups of kids when the dynamic is largely negative, you spend a lot of time coming up with ways to keep the lid on, or to open it up just so much and no more.

In my fantasy of the ideal classroom, I would be orchestrating as much as teaching. Of course I would teach stuff myself, but mainly I would be bringing in a lot of different people to do a lot of different things, while I provided the continuity. Even the teaching part, the instructional part, can be-should be-a lot like orchestrating-setting the kids off in different directions and letting their energy take over; letting them do what they're good at, and sometimes what they're not so good at yet, providing inspiration to get them started, then helping them share with and inspire each other, providing motivation to keep them going and feedback and encouragement to keep that energy flowing from the kids themselves. That's my ideal. That's what I would like to have happen one hundred percent of the time.

My classroom does not live up to my ideal one hundred percent of the time. Hardly. When the kids' energy source is not being tapped to fuel the lesson or the activity, that's when monotony sets in. You can see it. The kids will tell you: they hate the language arts books, they hate taking notes in history. I can't afford to expect perfections from myself. I am not superwoman. But sometimes it does happen, and I think it happened often enough this year that, overall, the kids felt good and learned a lot. And so did I.

Julia Devanthery-Lewis, 6th grade: There's a lot of trust between people in this class. We've gotten to know each other really well, so people trust each other more than they do in other classes. Fifth graders as well as sixth graders. These are things that we all share together, the things we do, things that happen in ther class, in recess. If something happens, it's easier for us to talk it out than it was a long time ago. Sort of like family.

The best kind of learning is learning all together, in little groups or big groups. It's a really good way to teach kids. Learn with each other, not just alone. Kids who don't learn this way are really missing out. I think it's a privilege for us to be able to have this kind of education. People who just learn the traditional way, just by themselves, who don't get help, it's like totally un-nineties. It's also scary.

Matisse Michalski, 5th grade: A lot of times, I think I want to be an actress when I grow up, because I like acting and everything. And then I think, "How much do I want to be an actress?" I'm really interested in the Holocaust, so maybe I'll be a Holocaust historian. There are so many things I want to do, but I can't do them all. When I was younger, I wanted to be the president. But now I realize, I'm not into politics, even though it sounds great and everuthing, I'm not into it enough. A couple of years ago, one of my friends did a survey of little kids, of what they wanted to be, and one little girl wanted to be a princess. And she's gonna grow up and figure out that she can't, and she's going to figure out something that is for her. When you're younger you only think of big important jobs, and only some people get to be those things. But there are smaller jobs that you can be equally happy in, and you get them, and you're happy. I'm probably going to change a lot by the time I'm twenty, or whatever. So I have no idea what I'm going to be, what kind of job I'm going to get. So what I'm going to try to do is, I'm going to write down everything that I want to be, make a long list, and then I think. And wait.

Genita Mosely, 6th grade: If I like a sport a lot, I want to play it. I'm kind of rugged. You know, some people think a girl just has to be nice, petite, and pretty, and you can't go and jump over that, you can't run around the track, you can't play basketball because you get all sweaty and you don't look right as a girl, your hair gets messed up and stuff. But to me, I'm a human being. I do what I do. I sweat, my hair is gonna get messed up sometimes, my fingernail are gonna get chipped, I'm not gonna worry about it...they'll grow back. And that's who I am.

Marc Riordan, 6th grade: I'm different from everybody else in the class because of my taste in music. I pretty much devote my life to music. I listen to music about twenty hours a day. I play the drums, and that's, like, really what I want to do when I grow up. What I want to dedicate my life to. I don't know about other people.

Julia Devanthery-Lewis, 6th grade: Some of the work that we did, I think it's old-fashioned. Like the textbooks, the language arts books, and the history books. I don't like the fact that we have to learn out of books that are meant for us, because I feel they don't take us very seriously. It's almost like they're written for second and third graders. It's all just totally spelled out, right there. Even though it's easy, it's almost insulting that they think that we're at that level in learning. I mean, we do have a brain. I think they're dumb. Boring. And I know that everyone agrees with me.

Molly Hanna, 5th grade: Chris likes giving homework. I think that means that, as a teacher, she wants us to learn a lot, and she wants us to come in the next day knowing what was in the homework, not just having it done, you know what I mean? She does history lessons on the blackboard, not just, you know, read a textbook and take notes. She teaches us a lot more. More than any other teacher I ever had. She expects a lot of us.

I think she does a really good job working with all the different kind of kids and different kinds of learning that go on in the class. She helps people if they can't do it. . . She has them stay after school, and she helps them, rather than just yelling at them. Yelling doesn't work very well, anway.

Gene Damian, 5th grade: I really like learning about Greek myths. Different cultures are better to learn about, because in the beginning, you don't know anything about them, and in the end you're pretty much an expert. I think knowing about those old Greeks changes the way I look at other people in the world today, definitely. You know, Lucien's from another country, and he's really, like, nice. And not everyone treats him really well. He's probably one of the nicest people in the class, but some people really resent him because they think he's too stupid to grasp things, because his reading and talking isn't that good. But it must be really hard, it takes a lot to come all the way from Haiti, or any other country, and to come to America and become so, like, fluent with this language... it's hard and it takes time. I think learning about ancient Greece helped me to see him differently.

Jocelyn O'Shea, 6th grade: I kinda think history is stupid. I mean, when you grow up to be whatever you're going to be, you don't need to know about Alexander the Great or some guy in ancient Greece. He doesn't matter. It's not gonna help you grow up to be yourself. Is it?

Robey Graham-Bailey, 5th grade: I don't think I've changed that much this year, I mean, me myself. I've gotten an inch taller, but other than that... I'm the same, inside and out. The girls seem different to me though. Girls are different from boys... I mean, they look different. They're like, taller. And shorter. It's hard to explain. But I still have some friends who are girls. Always have.

Rebecca Brigham, 5th grade: This year, I think I've realized how much I can do if I really try. And I think I've grown in understanding about teasing. When you get teased, you tease back. I know how to cope with it now. It used to be really hard for me. I know different skills now than I did at the beginning of the year. I've learned about writing a little better, about editing my own work. And I know a lot of new people.

Genita Mosely, 6th grade: People consider that I'm very popular, just because everybody knows me. Even the seventh and eighth graders. I'm kinda proud of being popular. It's not like I'm popular-popular, like "Hey, Genita, you come here," but everybody just knows me, knows who I am. People respect me. And they trust me. I'm a little bit proud of that.

Dana Jones, 5th grade: Everybody on the outside has a different look, but on the inside, we all have bones, a heart, muscles, skin tissue, all that stuff. So everybody's the same, mostly. Physically. But in the way of behavior, I think I'm different from everybody. I'm always making jokes and stuff, saying things like, "Let us be cheerful while we work," stuff like that, because, you know, I don't want to grow up. Being a kid has been bad enough, so, who would want to grow up?

Christa Sanders-Fleming, 6th grade: If I find something boring, I always invent some little game for myself. I think of my mind as another being, so that if I have a problem and I need to figure things out, I always have this other being to help. I always think of my mind as this seer that can tell me the problem and it can tell me the solution. It's good for homework problems and life problems. So, if I have a math problem, I'll say, "Okay, Mind, now what's the answer to this?" And at home, if I get into a fight with somebody in my family, I'll go upstairs and I'll be unhappy. And I'll talk to my Mind and say, "Are you going to cheer me up now, and make me happy? And everythings going to be all over and I'm going to go down and apologize and get it over and all that?" Seomtimes it works, usually.

Matisse Michalski, 5th grade: Our class is kind of unusual, I think, because somehow we know we're a group. Sometimes, a class is just like a bunch of individuals, and they fight a lot about everything, and they don't work together, and they say, "I'm me, you're you," and they don't seem to pull together and make anything happen. It just sort of happens in 306. Getting to know people at the beginning of the year was hard for me, especially the sixth graders. I knew a couple of them, but, like, Tammy and Genita, I'd never seen before in my life. But I tried to get to know them, we were in groups together, and we talked, and did projects together, and you know, like how when you're walking? And it just gets easier and easier as you go along, and then, it's done. You're there. And now it's the end of the year.

Chris Affleck, Teacher: The kids are really at a watershed age now. They'll be going into a larger, less protected world when they leave here, a world driven more by social pressures and hormones, both things more powerful than thay are. It will be a time of big shaking-up of self confidence and self-esteem. I want them to leave here taking themselves seriously as learners and as people. I hope that while they're here, they learn to trust and count on themselves, that they expect to do well in their work, both in school and in life. Theat's something that can never be taken away from them. Some of them will still get lost. I've known of kids, former students of mine, who've gotten into real trouble... starting fires, running away, getting pregnant, fighting, getting into drugs and alcohol. It happens. I hope it happens less often with kids who know themselves. I know it happens less often with kids who have learned how to put lots of effort into whatever it is they do, even if they don't soar academically. It's easy to fall far and fast if they don't take themselves seriously, value who they are, have some integrity and sense of self-worth. Those are the things that can make all the difference for a kid, no matter where they start out.

This is really the last chance these kids will have to be all together, with this wonderfully random mix of classmates, where they have to spend the whole day in the same room and learn to get along. In middle school and high school, they'll divide up naturally into "like" groups, whether by interests, race, gender, class, whatever. For example, in my class there are still friendships between boys and girls. That will change next year. It's sad, but it's the way it is.

My own children went to Cambridge public schools. Now that they're grown up, more or less, I see by differences between them and their friends who went to schools where everyone was more or less just like them. My children are sophisticated, in a genuine way, because they know from their own experience what it is to go to the same school and learn the same sttuff in class every day with kids who've grown up in a profoundly different world, right in their own town. For a lot of middle-class people, the terms "working class," "public assistance," "single parent," and "welfare" are just mythology. They don't really know what any of those things mean. They think they do, but they don't. It's the same for kids whose families are on welfare, or who live in a place where everyone else they see is just like them. "Middle class" is mythology for them, too. And what does this mean for these people when they become adults? How can they connect in any way with characters from a mythology of their own making? People are not real to them that way. And they cannot feel compassion, sympathy, or responsibility toward members of a "group" that are not real to them.

The kids from Room 306 already understand that different kids have a different worldview from theirs, and they understand why. They're also beginning to know that what's possible is different for different kids because of who they are and where they're from, what their home and family and background and religion and ambition are. I hope they can build on that knowledge, and dispel the mytholohies. If they can, we'll have done a good thing for everybody.

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