Keeping It Old School: The Retro Arcade Project

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Originally published in TEACH Magazine, November/December 2021 Issue

By John Burrows

Over the course of my sixteen years of teaching, I’ve taught classes in art, photography, and AV. For the last three years I’ve been running the graphic design courses at JB Hensler College and Career Academy (JBH) in Texas. I often assign projects to my students that involve designing logos, t-shirts, and stickers; illustrating scenes from books; or using posters to tell stories of their favorite vacations.

While those can be lots of fun, one of my favourite things to do is collaborate with other teachers and classes, especially of different subjects. I’ve always found that collaborating with multiple classes allows students from diverse backgrounds and varied skill sets to contribute as equals towards a meaningful and common goal.

In the past, I have organized projects with construction, cosmetology, and barbering classes, as well as with health science and vet tech students. Sometimes those projects were based around student-to-student partnerships, other times they involved collaboration between entire classes. Students have worked together to create skateboards, marketing materials and business branding, and even customized scrubs.

Some of those projects were successes and some of them were not, as occasionally collaborative projects can end up being driven by one dominant group. But they were all learning experiences and I always look forward to the next one.

Using what I had learned, I wanted to design a new project that could be more about classes working together, communicating, and listening to each other. It needed to be a project that couldn’t be dictated by any one class. Around that time, I’d been considering building a personal arcade cabinet for my own home.

When I started researching what was involved—required hardware, construction logistics, exterior design, etc.—I realized that all of the skills needed to pull this off could be found within the different subjects of study at JBH. The idea for my next collaborative (and ambitious) project was born.

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John Burrows has been teaching for 16 years and is always looking for new ways to get students engaged. He strongly encourages his students to explore their own creativity and find their voice.

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John Burrows
John Burrows
John Burrows has been teaching for 16 years and is always looking for new ways to get students engaged. He strongly encourages his students to explore their own creativity and find their voice.

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