Moment+in+Time

Moment in time: use photography to create greater cultural awareness in children and young people in the classroom and library media center.Full Text Available By: McKenzie, Barbara K.; Davidson, Tom. School Library Monthly, December 1999, Vol. 16 Issue 4, p22

UTHOR:	Barbara K. McKenzle and Tom Davidson TITLE:	Moment in time: Use Photography to Create Greater Cultural Awareness in Children and Young People in the Classroom and Library Media Center SOURCE:	School Library Media Activities Monthly 16 no4 22-3+ D 1999 COPYRIGHT:	The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. INTRODUCTION The United States exists as it is today because of cultural diversity. It is the result of millions of persons for hundreds of years from a myriad of places for uncountable reasons (some self chosen and some imposed by others) joining those who were already here and had been for thousands of years. Given its multi-ethnic, multi-cultural developmental history, our nation could hardly have become anything else but a rainbow of beliefs, religions, values, and colors. We must not only accept these facts, but also embrace them as being a foundation of who and what we are. MORE DIVERSITY The future survival of our nation will depend on, among many others, one critical factor. That factor will be the ability of all of us to recognize the validity and value of each of the many cultures among which each of us will live. There is no doubt that as we move into a new century, cultural diversity among the people of our nation will increase and will continue to do so as our population expands and the planet seems to become smaller and smaller. Current and future technology advances in travel, computers and computer-based systems, telecommunications, and others as yet only glimmers in our minds have reduced, and will continue to reduce, the significance of our location on the globe. The impact of these factors will only become greater as they bring us closer to our global neighbors. CULTURAL AWARENESS: THE BEGINNINGS OF UNDERSTANDING AND ACCEPTANCE The question for us as educators is how we help our children and young people (and ourselves, for that matter) become more understanding of those who are different from ourselves and how we better enable them to accept those differences? One answer to this question is to increase youngsters' awareness of the wide variety of peoples and unique cultures. It is safe to say that fear and mistrust of that which is different is a direct product of ignorance. What is unknown is most often feared. That which is misunderstood is most often mistrusted. If we wish to decrease our children's ignorance of the ways of others and how they live, we must provide our children with experiences of appropriate and accurate knowledge of how other cultures live. If our goal for our children is to clarify what is unclear and to help them better understand how and why cultural differences exist, we must bring them into contact with these differences so they may recognize their validity and learn, through firsthand experience, the destructiveness of fear and mistrust, the way to begin this process is an increased awareness of other cultures -- their ways, values, and humanity MAKING CULTURAL AWARENESS REAL THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY Teachers, library media specialists, and technology trainers in the schools can play an active role in enhancing students' cultural awareness through the use of a variety of media. The authors, within the context of this particular article, will focus on the use of photography with teachers and students to promote greater understanding of diverse cultures. A variety of successful applications follow that teachers and library media specialists may apply in their classrooms to promote a greater comprehension of other cultures. TEACHER ACTIVITIES 1. Provide students with throw-away cameras and ask them to take photographs of their family. Once students have the developed photographs, they will share the photographs with the class and provide information about family members. 2. Create a bulletin board display of photos of students who represent different cultures. Include selected information about traditions, language, and population composition with each photograph. 3. Work with the multicultural clubs in the school such as Spanish or French, and create displays of the clubs in central places in the school so that others become more aware of the club opportunities and activities. 4. Visit countries outside the U. S., take photographs and/or slides, and share these with your class or other interested students and personnel in the school. When possible, use this visual information to accompany a unit of study on the country. 5. Use a copy stand and selected visuals to take photos and/or slides of a multitude of people representing diverse cultures all involved in tasks to demonstrate that we are similar (i.e., religious activities, marriage, food choices, and yearly celebrations). 6. Ask students to bring pictures to class of their families participating in one of their favorite celebrations (i.e., Kwanzaa, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day Hanukkah, Valentine's Day, Halloween, May Fest, Christmas, Passover, and Easter). Describe what is happening in the photographs and who is involved. 7. Take students on field trips to different cultural sites such as museums, significant historical sites and landmarks, and celebratory events such as festivals and carnivals. Students may take photographs for a photo report of the visit that highlights the events that were of the greatest interest to them. 8. Accompany students to the school's international festival, if one exists, and have them photograph the sights they feel are interesting. When students return to class, they may make oral reports with visuals on new information that was learned as a result of the trip. 9. Obtain photographs or picture slides of selected war events in the past (i.e., Vietnam, Desert Storm, War of 1812, Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Holocaust) and have students discuss the conflict of cultures that existed at the time as well as the politics in the war. 10. If available, select and collect digital photographs online of different cultures and share these with the class. Ask students specific questions that deal with similarities and differences of these selected cultures that will require students to compare and contrast. 11. Help students obtain electronic pen pals around the world and send digital photographs of their class so students have visual images of those with whom they are corresponding. 12. After establishing Internet pals, students may collaborate on selected multicultural projects upon which the two classroom teachers agree, such as making comparisons between homes, clothes, size of cities, standards of living, access to technology, etc. The finished report should include written and visual information. 13. Use photographs or slides as a basis for student writing projects. 14. Have students design and put up bulletin boards that display different multicultural events that are being studied in the school such as birthdays of presidents and important persons, people from different countries and cultures who have made significant contributions to the space program, Christmas around the world, etc. 15. As part of a unit of study on comparative religions, have students take photographs with throw-away or 35mm cameras of the inside and outside of different religious buildings so that differences and similarities can be studied. (Be sure students obtain permission for inside sites.) 16. Use the Internet to communicate with students from other schools in and out of state, collect photographs of what their cities or schools used to look like, and note the differences that have taken place over time. In addition, start a scrapbook for your school, if one does not exist, for future students and teachers to view. 17. When possible, include photographs in the school newsletter that feature multicultural events going on in the school. 18. Take photographs of students at the beginning of the year and ask them to write their autobiography. This information will accompany the photographs in the teacher files. Students may write another autobiography at the end of the year and compare and contrast the two. 19. Through online resources, the library media center's print and electronic materials, and other educational products, collect visuals that show different cultures around the world. Share these with students and have discussions about what is meant by the term "multicultural," why it is important for students to be familiar with the term, and what the similarities and differences are that exist among the cultures shown. 20. Encourage students to bring in photographs and/or slides of their travels. Display these photos on a bulletin board in the class along with written summaries by the students that describe the vacation, where it took place, and/or their favorite part of the trip. LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALIST ACTIVITIES 1. Take photographs of places traveled and/or collect photographs from teachers and students in the school. Display these on the library media center's bulletin board accompanied by captions to explain the place the photograph was taken and selected information about the location or country in which the photograph was taken. 2. Take digital or color print photographs of multicultural events in the school and start a web page for the school. 3. Access resource databases online that focus on multicultural information. Print color visuals from the sites and display those visuals in the library media center. 4. On a bulletin board in the library media center, display book covers from authors who represent minorities as well as materials related to multicultural events to draw student's attention and interest. In addition, suggest that teachers give an assignment in which students are required to read about specific multicultural topics and make reports to their class that incorporate visuals (i.e., photographs, slides, and digital photos incorporated in PowerPoint presentations). 5. Display enlarged photographs and other related materials that feature authors from many of cultures. 6. Set up a permanent display area in the library media center in which visuals and text of an author from a different culture are featured each month. 7. Invite popular authors from different cultures to visit your school, meet with groups of students, and make a presentation to all students in which they tell about life for them as a child. Students may photograph the speaker. Put the best photo in the school newspaper or local newspaper accompanied by a written narrative. 8. Use the copy stand to make slides of pictures of selected prominent figures in other cultures. Encourage teachers to use the slide/tape to help students identify and become more knowledgeable of these prominent figures. 9. Invite teachers in the school to send small groups of students to the library media center to learn basic photography skills (i.e., composing and taking good photographs, doing copy stand work, using a digital camera, and incorporating shots in electronic presentations). Focus student work on selected multicultural topics. 10. Design and conduct a workshop for interested teachers on how to use photography as a means of enhancing the curriculum. Present examples of how photography can be used to enhance the multicultural awareness of students. To provide information about cultural diversity and pluralism to the classroom teacher and students in K-12 institutions, the library media specialist must serve as a salesperson. To accomplish this, the library media specialist must become as familiar as possible with what cultural diversity is, how they can get to know the diverse personal and learning needs of their student body, and how they can motivate students to want to know about other cultures that are different from their own. CONCLUSION Look around you. You live in the world's greatest successful experiment in multiculturalism. You are here and you reap the benefits of our society because of the coming together of millions of human beings each with their culture, history, and beliefs. We must value our cultural differences -- they are who we are. Children and young people can internalize and develop understanding of the multicultured worlds we have lived in, are living in, and will live in only to the extent they have a variety of positive learning experiences. The closer we can bring our young people to the reality of the ways of others, the more they can see others as no different that ourselves. Photography is a powerful tool that can bring youngsters, through a variety of photographic activities, closer to the real world of our cultural differences and similarities. Library media specialists must take the lead in helping teachers and children use photography to bring the big, wide world into each classroom. ADDED MATERIAL Barbara K. McKenzle, Ph.D., Research Media and Technology, and Tom Davidson, Media Services, teach at State University of West Georgia in Carrollton, GA. REFERENCES Block, Cathy Collins, and Jo Ann Zinke. Creating a Culturally Enriched Curriculum for Grades K-6. Allyn & Bacon, 1994. Cummins, Jim. Brave New Schools: Challenging Cultural Illiteracy through Global Learning Networks. St. Martins Press, 1995. Milford, Susan. Hands around the World: 365 Creative Ways to Encourage Cultural Awareness and Global Respect. Williamson, 1992.