Picture Pages

On Thursdays I teach a class on Digital Photography. I must make it clear- I do not teach digital photography techniques; I facilitate a discussion of photo challenges that the children answer by submitting photographs they have taken with their digital cameras.

The students are age 10 yrs to 16 yrs, and the challenges are simple yet thought-provoking.

The first class, I gave all 13 students their own booklet with each challenge described for the entire course. I told the kids to keep the pages, and assemble them into a binder at home. Over the next half hour, I watched as kids doodled on the pages, wrote insults about each other, and drew caricatures of one another in the blank spaces. A few of the students rolled their pages into tubes, and began smacking other students.

To occupy them for the rest of our scheduled time, I suggested we play a popular improv game.

When the class was over, and the students had left the area, there were several sets of papers left on the tables. I gathered them up and took them to a central area of the Learning Center. At the end of the day, when everyone had left, the pile remained untouched.

The next time we met, I expected to see 13 answers to the challenge assigned. Of the 13 students, perhaps only four or five had a photo to show. I had a few new students, so we used the time to get books to those kids, and go over the challenges again ("I lost my book!" ... "Hey, I don't know where mine went!" ... "I left it on the table, but I came back later and it was gone.").

Going over the challenges is, in fact, a challenge. One challenge is to take a photo in your back yard. A hand goes up. "Yes?"

"Can I use my grandma's yard instead?"

"Oh, sure!"

"Because she has these bird feeders that are cool and this tree that gets really pretty leaves-"

"Sounds great. Take a picture and show us."

"... and this big rock that I sit on when it's warm...."

"Sounds pretty cool. Can't wait to see it. Moving on, we see that the challenge after that is-"

a hand goes up. "Yes?"

"One time, the neighbor's dog came into her yard, and it was walking on her flowers."

"Oh, no. Let's talk more about these challenges, okay?"

Another hand goes up. (sigh) "Yes?"

"At our old house, we didn't have a yard. But now we have a nice one. Can I use that?"

"Absolutely! Whatever yard you want- yes?"

"What if we wanted to use the President's yard?"

"Well, if you find yourself in his yard, then by all means, but the challenge is titled Your Backyard. Let's try to keep that in mind. Yes?"

"Can we use the same photo for all the challenges?"

"Well, we might get bored seeing the same picture each week. Wouldn't you get bored submitting the same photo each week? Uh, yes?"

"And she doesn't even like dogs! And she'd just planted all these flowers!"

"Let's keep moving! No more questions. At all. Put your hand down. Your arm will get really tired, because I'm not calling on you."

The next time we met, almost half the class brought photos this time, which means over half had not. I came prepared. I'd bought 3-ring folders and 200 clear sheet protectors for the entire class. We had lots of class time to work on our folders. I handed out new books, and the folders, and sheet protectors, and showed them one I'd already assembled. Even after watching the others, several children had to be shown exactly how to insert the sheet protectors into the folders. I passed around a pen so each folder could get the owner's name written in it.

One of the kids asked to play the Improv Game again. Tegan came up with a fantastic idea- if everyone brought in photos next week, we'd save time at the end for an Improv game.

When everyone left at the end of that class, there were several folders abandoned on the floor.

None of them had names written in them.