My Life Project

Since the end of the school year's almost here, I am trying out a new project with some of my students. I know it should be the time to wind down, but for me, I like to use the last few weeks for a cool project. This year, I'm calling it the "My Life Project". It's sort of a selfish endeavor for me because I am interested in life amongst Mexico City's poorest, but I'm hoping it'll be a good eye-opening opportunity for the kids to take a critical look at their surroundings.

So what I'm going is this: I'm giving 32 kids a disposable camera to document a day in their life. Then, with the photos they take, they are going to compile a book with English captions (had to sneak in the English somewhere). I've mostly confined the project to out-of-school hours since I don't want a whole lot of pictures of kids sitting in desks. The cameras were a donation years ago from a lady I knew who worked at Fuji in Dallas, and for some reason, it's taken me this long to pull them out. I hope the roll of film isn't warped; and I hope I can still find someone to develop the film. 

We've just started our project, so we have been talking about life with your family, life in a community, the people who make up a community, etc. Then I gave them a crash course in taking interesting pictures. I explained that the "normal" pictures with loved ones standing side-by-side smiling big is not really an interesting photo. Interesting photos capture emotions, the scenery, and often, the way the two are put together make a photo interesting. All this in Spanish, by the way. And all of this with 9-year-olds!

Since the school is a technological dinosaur, I couldn't just pull up photos of other kids who had done similar projects. Instead, I passed out a few National Geographic magazines, and we searched for and discussed what makes certain photographs interesting. Ideally, this part of the project would take months, and the kids would have time to practice taking pictures. But, alas, the resources are scarce, and we have just three weeks and one chance to get it done. Even if the students can take away one really good photo from the project, I'll be happy. The kids are super excited, and I find it a waaayyy more interesting way to conduct English class. :)