In my brother's classroom

In my brother's classroom, a vast array of media fills the various shelves and cupboards, including DVDs from the last ten years and VHS tapes older than me. A sleek, black desktop PC with a flatscreen monitor sits on a desk that has probably been there since before the death of Chaplin, a stylish leather pad making the mouse feel right at home. The main space is filled with a horseshoe of decades-old desks and chairs, in the center of which the most classic and fresh improv games are played on a daily basis. The wall opposite the bookshelves is for the display of information. On the left an antiquated chalkboard, on the right a whiteboard and dry-erase markers. Nestled comfortably in between them, apparently with no awareness of incongruity, is a smart-board, the cutting edge of educational technology. Using this device, my brother can interact with a projector screen, or his PC, by way of markers that produce neither chalk nor ink but computer signals. In this environment, my brother teaches film studies, theatre arts, and, whether he realizes it or not, how to live in a world that is both old and new, how to keep the past alive while looking to the future, how to accept the incongruities of life.