Curriculum inspiration

I want to give a shout out to this really wonderful resource. Our ideas for this project have been largely inspired by Wendy Ewald's book I Wanna Take Me a Picture: Teaching Photography and Writing to Children. This practical and accessible guide is written for parents and teachers and has some really good ideas about photography for children, some like our family assignment, are very simple and affective, and some are a little more complex. The main idea is that photographs inspire stories from children's lives or fantasies and vice versa. The stories that play out in their images become a catalyst for writing and literacy. We have been able to take these ideas and modify them to meet the English needs of our students here.

Birthday in Wasgamuwa..

To our amazement the guys at SLWCS somehow came up with a birthday cake... and the sweet moves are courtesy of SLWCS field house employee and resident dancer, Syria. Best birthday ever... Thanks guys!

They borrowed all the candles from their chicken incubator. So resourceful!

A sneak peak...

This morning we went in to check out the photographs that our students shot last night around thier homes and with thier families. They took very thorough visual records from the moment they left school yesterday until they returned; one student came in with 593 photographs! We are thrilled that they are shooting so much, and many of thier pictures are stunning images of a day in the life of thier family. Here's a sneak peak.

Vivaj

Vivaj

Vidovanga

Sampath

Sampath

Maleesha

Maleesha

Kelum

Hasita

Hasita

Dilini

Dilini

Chandra

Ayomika

Ayomika

We sent the other half of the students home with cameras today. After taking the weekend to see more of the country with the film crew, we will return next week to talk and write more about their family photographs.

Rahdunu talks about his drawing...

Day two..

Day two with our kids was a great success! With the help of our translator, Chandana, we were able to communicate with the children with ease.

We began by reviewing some of the images that the children captured during the free shoot yesterday. They were very excited to see the pictures they had taken. As we reviewed the images we taught them the English words for what they had shot. The children have a beginning level of English language proficiency. That is, they understand a few isolated words and expressions. Nevertheless, they are eager to shout out all the words that they know in English.

In order to communicate the idea that a photograph can tell a story we used an image from Helen Levitt's book, A Way of Seeing. With the help of our translator we began by asking the children to look closely at the details in the photograph. We then asked them to describe what they see and what they think might have happened in the picture. We reiterated that there was no correct answer. Their responses were creative and reflect their developing understanding of how a photograph tells a story.

Untitled (broken mirror), Helen Levitt, New York, c.1940

To introduce the first assignment, Family, we presented images of diverse families. As the children looked at the photographs we taught them the English words for the members of a family. We then asked the children to draw their family in their journal. The children worked diligently. "Teacher, Teacher!" they exclaimed as they finished their work. They were eager to show us their drawings and use their newly acquired English vocabulary to describe their families.

Finally, it was time to send the cameras home with the children. Their assignment was to photograph their family and their home. We hope that this will give us an intimate glimpse into their lives. The children were incredibly anxious to get the cameras into their hands and I think we are just as anxious to see what they will photograph!

Day one with our kids

They love being photographed!

After a couple days of settling in and getting acquainted with the wonderful people we are collaborating with at SLWCS, we met our class. We will be working with 20 polite and lively 9 and 10 year olds who were very excited to meet us. The school consists of two open air rooms and sits on the grounds of a Buddhist temple. The Sinhalese people of this area are mainly a Buddhist population, and the religion resonates throughout the culture here.

On our first day with the children, our translator called in sick (things don't always work out as planned here in Sri Lanka)! So to get to know the children and to break through the language barrier, we started with a wordless picture book called Flotsam. In this book, a boy discovers an underwater camera that has washed up to shore. Upon developing the film, images from under the sea and portraits from around the world are revealed. We hope that this visual story translated the idea that photography is a universal language, and we can learn about the world and connect with each other through photographs.

Ayomika, 10

Sampath, 9

Taking a cue from this book, we then had the children take portraits of each other, print, and then take the next portrait with the previous portrait in hand. The result was a picture in a picture in a picture... a repetitive activity to get to know their names and for them to get to know the cameras and printer. The kids could not get enough of seeing their images on the LCD and watching them print! Their excitement was overwhelming. For the complete set of their portraits, click here.

Anil looking at Flotsam

We ended our first morning with some free shooting around the school and temple grounds. This must have been the most fun part of their day. They were all over photographing insects, flowers, each other, the principal, murals... anything that that they came across! Tomorrow (with help from a translator!) we will show them some of their images, learn some English words for the objects that they shot today, and talk about our first assignment.

An interesting local insect.

Photographing the younger class on the playground.

Our arrival in Wasgamuwa

View from our porch, Wasgamuwa, Sri Lanka. Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

Becky, Lacey, and Jon. Rishikesh, India. Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

We flew into Columbo at 2 am after a week in India. Our brief travels in India proved to be as much of a culture shock as any of us had read about... it was loud, hot, crowded, and chaotic, yet there was this remarkable magic to the way people live amongst each other in so much noise and disorder. Experiencing this phenomenon there is an unforgettable reality check.

SLWCS employee, Sampath. Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

Sri Lanka was an oasis from the moment we left the airport. We were greeted by our very smiley and warm driver, Sampath, and after a few hours of sleep in Colombo, we departed for Wasgamuwa in the big cozy white SLWCS van. Six hours and a lot of dirt roads later we arrived at an utter paradise. The area of Wasgamuwa sits at the foot of an elegant mountain range, and this time of year (the start of the dry season) it is lush and green and water holes (tanks) are full. The heat is mild (relative to India, or NYC this summer) and there is fresh breeze in the mornings and evenings. The people here are friendly, sincere, and they seem to live in a beautiful harmony with their land. So far, it is one of the most wonderful places I've ever visited, and we can not wait to meet the kids and get to know the community more closely.

Our cottage; the walls are made from elephant dung! Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

Beautiful day to hike over the rock. Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

Lunch at the SLWCS field house. Mmmm.. Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

Wasgamuwa road at sunset. Photo courtesy Phil Buccellato

We're packing up!

Thanks to over 70 extremely generous backers, we are ready to embark on our Community/ Cameras project in Wasgamuwa, Sri Lanka. Once our funding goal was met early last week, we immediately began to purchase all the equipment that the kids will need for the photography workshop that we will begin on July 24th. All money pledged goes toward our purchase of 10 Canon Powershot cameras, cases, and mini tripods, an HP laptop and external hard drive, a Canon Selphy Compact Printer as well as plenty of ink cartridges and paper, personal notebooks for the children, and books to accompany our lesson plans.

Equipment for the kids; getting ready to pack it up.

All of the equipment arrived last night, and it was like Christmas around my apartment, boxes and plastic wrapping flying all over and our team excitedly setting up and trying out the laptop and cameras for the kiddos. We are very pleased with all the equipment; it is all simple, sturdy, and user friendly, so the kids should catch on pretty quickly

I cannot thank our backers enough for your contributions toward the project. Because of you we are able to share all of this great equipment and a brand new experience with 30 rural Sri Lankan children. THANK YOU ALL, and I hope you will continue to check in with us via this blog throughout July and August.