Reporting on their communities helps students recognize problems and find strategies for change.
The communities we live in determine a good part of our lives. This is especially true for children, who are not able to move about as easily as some adults. Yet we rarely examine what constitutes community. Putting into words or pictures a concept so vital, so primal and so basic through the process of taking pictures, writing about community and asking for reflection allowed my students the opportunity to uncover common problems and find strategies to address them.
Like many communities prior to Brown v. Board of Education, ours was terribly segregated. Robeson County, N.C., had at least three school systems, one for Blacks, Whites and Native Americans. The process of desegregation was painful and violent for each group, and still there are resentments today.
In a county with such distinct cultures, how do you get students to see outside their own perspectives without aggression? How do you give students a different view, something a little more panoramic?
We started with a photograph and began to explore one another and ourselves.
We taught our students how to take photographs and then had them write about these pictures. Some of them had cameras, and some didn't. We had disposable cameras available. They were to photograph something that was important in their lives and communities.
Shernelia, one of my students, wrote about a dilapidated barn:
"The old barn was built in 1905. It looks like this now because a storm called Fran caused it to be down like that. It belonged to my great-great grandfather and grandmother. I like to look at it because I try to remember all the good things they did when my mother tells me about it."
In this way, a seemingly old barn that practically everyone would have dismissed became as precious as the most esteemed historical building in our county. The Community Through Photography project allowed students the opportunity to picture and talk about community from new perspectives.
Learn more about mining your own community for across-the-curriculum lessons from www.foxfire.org.Get Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews ($15.95) at www.tcpress.com. (ISBN# 0807745383)
Caroline Dunnum
CIS Academy
Pembroke, N.C.
