J is for Justinian’s Code
My first encounter with Literacy Through Photography was in January of 2009, almost exactly three years ago. I spent that Spring in Katie Hyde’s class at Duke University learning about LTP and the ideas and projects of Wendy Ewald. I had always loved photography and saw it as a way to capture my memories. However, after the class and experiencing LTP in Arusha, Tanzania, I started to see the powerful impact the medium could have on a student, a school, or even a community. 
I came back from Tanzania and worked again with LTP in Durham. However, as an undergraduate student, my commitment was at most three or four months at a time. I had always wondered how LTP would look if I structured it into a more long-term curriculum. Thankfully, I got that chance this past year. After graduating, I got a job as a teacher at a small international school in Malang, Indonesia. I am so thankful that I get to work in a place where the curriculum is flexible and the staff is always looking for new approaches to get students to love and appreciate learning.
One of my favorite LTP projects I tried at this school was the alphabet project for an 8th grade World History class. This class is diverse learning-wise as we have a few students who are native English speakers, a few who are English as a Second Language (ESL), and others scattered in between. They had just finished learning about the Byzantine Empire and Russia, but a few were still having trouble with key terms and facts. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity for an LTP project. I decided on the alphabet project because there were many terms and ideas the students needed to comprehend.
We started off by brainstorming different words for the alphabet. The students came up with their own lists and after discussion with each other, they decided on an alphabet for the class to do together.
The class decided that for the letter “Y” they should pick the phrase “Y study this?” I was glad to see that the students were already one step ahead of me and were thinking about the significance of the lesson, rather than on the sheer memorization of a word.
We then assigned a “director” for each letter. The director would decide what to take a picture of and who s/he wanted to be in the picture. Some students struggled with how to take a picture – i.e. “But we don’t have snow here, so how would we take a picture of Russia?” However, after some encouragement and more brainstorming, all of the students had ideas on how to creatively portray Russia and the Byzantine Empire.
Therefore the second day of the project, we dove into taking pictures. I felt that this is where I had overestimated how much I could do. I had always worked in a team or at least a pair when working with LTP projects. And while the students are older than the average students I had worked with in LTP, there were too many of them for me to be able to supervise. I had difficulty trying to a) be efficient with the allotted time for my class period but also b) let the students take careful time and effort to get the results they desired.
Therefore what ended up happening was the whole class moved in a group to different locations. Although this process took longer than I had originally anticipated, I was able to supervise students alone and the students also had a chance to observe each other during this time. This proved to be beneficial, as they would often give ideas to the “director” of the photograph or talk amongst each other about the topic at hand. 
One of the images I thought was extremely creative was Q – Quest. At first the students seemed to be daunted by the word, but then the “director” in charge of the photo decided to take a picture of ants. When I asked why, she replied that the “quest” of ants looking for food symbolized people of the Byzantine Empire on a “quest” for hidden cultural artifacts. This encouraged other students to think out of the box about their words. 
After the students finished taking the pictures, I had the photographs printed out and laid the images out for the students to see. Each student picked photographs that they wanted to write a short paragraph about, and got to work. The students took some time to “read the picture” – what was in the picture that related to the topic? Did the photographer leave any hints or clues? Some of the students began with a draft using the pre-writing process I often encourage and others started writing furiously on the colored sheets of paper. Many of them shared their writings with their neighbors.
I put up the pictures in my classroom so that the entire alphabet was displayed with the students’ writings. The first people to see the work were not my students, themselves, but other students of the school. They were impressed and took time in looking at each and every picture. My class was extremely proud of their work, and so was I. 
One of the things I have grown to love about LTP is that it does not matter where you take it – Durham, Arusha, or even a little town in Indonesia. People are all looking for a way in which they can express themselves, and if given the encouragement, they will amaze you in ways you never thought were possible. And yes, there are bumps and challenges along the way, but as I learned in Arusha: pole pole, hakuna matata… slowly, slowly, no worries. I am so thankful that I get to experience LTP every day, little by little, pole pole.
Mapping Tanzania, a post by katie hyde and fran campos
January 22, 2012
Last fall Fran Campos and I led an LTP workshop for ten Standard 5 students at Arusha School, with the hope of preparing and inspiring our group to become student LTP leaders at their school. One of our projects involved the study and making of maps. We first looked at maps of Africa made hundreds of years ago by Europeans. We discussed how the drawing of these maps was based on limited and often inaccurate information and how the maps contained imagery representing myths about African landscapes, people and culture.
The end goal of our map project was for students to create a modern day map of their country with imagery representing real stories of individual lives in Tanzania.
Students first sketched detailed maps of their homes and then elaborated a written story about one particular memory associated with the map. For instance, Floriana wrote about the surprise she encountered the day she traveled alone, without her mother, to fetch water in the faraway well. Laureen’s map (below) referenced the spot ‘where we make stories.” 
Next we asked students to circle any ‘feeling’ words or phrases that denoted emotions. Fran, an actor, led several theater exercises with the students and helped them transmit expressions and gestures related to their stories. 
Students chose a key moment or scene from their map stories and drew a plan for how to photograph that scene. David drew two people seated in chairs facing one another. He titled the sketch “encouraging” and above the figure on the right there’s a talk bubble that says “be brave.” 
Some students drew a single rectangular frame and others a story board containing a few frames. After shooting their photographs students wrote captions on the borders. 
Next, two volunteers climbed onto our table and drew an impressively thorough map of Tanzania on a large piece of paper. Once they’d finished, each student glued a few self-portrait images onto the map, placing their pictures in the region of his or her family’s birthplace. Along the outer edges of Tanzania’s borders, students arranged their maps and written stories along with the images representing those stories.
Top row: Joshua, Betram, David, Emile, Adelina, Verena, Laureen. Bottom row: Gabriel, Mohamed, Floriana.
This Durham LTP project is an exploration of Tanzania’s language, culture and art. Denise Baynham’s 3rd grade students at Club Blvd Humanities Magnet created photographic stories about Swahili and English proverbs and made miniature versions of kangas, the colorful cloths traditionally worn by women in East Africa. The project combines lessons in art, library research, reading, writing, photography, geography, and language.
Denise and I began by talking with her students about Tanzanian geography, culture and language. We looked at a map of Africa and then a map of Tanzania. We found the city of Arusha, Tanzania—a sister city of Durham, North Carolina. I shared some examples of self-portrait pictures and writings made by children in Arusha.
We introduced several Swahili words starting with karibuni (welcome) and asante (thank you). After mentioning the word safari, which means trip/journey, we looked for Mt. Kilimanjaro on the map. Students repeated a few words related to safaris such as Mbuyo (Baobab tree) and tembo (elephant). We also taught a few words associated with school like wanafunzi (students) and watoto (children).
For the next word, kanga, we showed the students pictures corresponding to two meanings of the word—the first picture was of a guinea fowl and the second a colorful cloth, the kind traditionally worn by women. Students recognized the connection between the colorful patterns on the bird and the fabric—which was blue with white polkadots.
Looking at the kangas we’d draped on the classroom’s bookshelves, students noticed their features—a border design, an image or motif in the middle of the rectangular cloth and a Swahili proverb written on the edge. We explained that women wear kangas to the market, men wear them at home, and families wrap their babies in them.
We talked about how kangas, with their written sayings and their motifs, send personal, social, religious or even political messages and are often given as gifts. We asked whether the t-shirts students had on that day expressed any messages and someone answered, pointing to a Carolina (UNC) shirt, “he loves Carolina.” Two girls’ shirts contained other messages—one with its Tinkerbelle design and another that said “Put me in the spotlight.”
We began talking about the meaning of one kanga’s proverb, which translated as “Love is blind.” One student guessed it meant, “you can’t see love, but you can feel love.” Another thought it meant, “you should love blind people.” Students became more curious about the red kanga with black teapots hanging by the window and asked, “what does that one say?” and “does the color matter?”
Students came up with ideas for the symbols they might put on a Kanga, suggesting such things as: a butterfly; God; a snake; an elephant; money; gold; a diamond; a shark; a peacock; a skull; a box with a dog jumping out of it, and so on.
Looking again at the picture of the guinea fowl, and thinking about how it related to the fabric, students saw the bird’s patterns and bright color and said it looked like the bird was wearing a cloth! We mentioned that these birds were known for being sociable, noisy, elegant, and having colorful spots.
These discussions led to other projects. In one, Denise’s students made miniature kangas. Using fruit and vegetables as stamps, students printed their kanga’s border design. In the center of the fabric, they drew a symbol, which at times connected to the proverb they chosen to write along the bottom edge.
picturing proverbs, a post by Denise Baynham and Katie Hyde
January 12, 2012
"Honesty is the best policy"
In the second part of the Tanzanian kanga and proverb project (see the above post), students illustrated proverbs with drawings, skits and photographs. Building on an exploration of fables facilitated by the school’s media specialist, we had another discussion in which students deciphered the meanings of proverbs. On the edge of a different kanga—this one black with tiny yellow stars—the proverb read, “Don’t set sail on someone else’s star.” We asked students to think of another way to say this and one suggested “don’t follow nobody; be a leader instead of a follower.” Others interpreted the proverb as follows: “don’t just do something cause your friends do it;” “make your own choices;” “don’t spy on people to see what they do;” “if they are doing something bad, don’t follow something even if they are a leader.”
We then asked students to discuss another proverb “wisdom is better than pearls” at their tables. The meaning of this saying proved to be more elusive. One conversation went like this:
-It means that being rich is better than being smart.
-He’s got it backwards.
-Pearls are rich and pretty and romantic.
-I don’t need no education, I just need money and a calculator in my pocket.
-It’s about spending money on important things actually.
We asked again, ‘what do you think it means when it’s saying that wisdom is better to have than pearls?’
-It’s better to be wise than to have expensive stuff.
-Spend your money on important things.
-If you are wise you can move on to college. Without an education you can’t move on.
-Wisdom will take you far, riches will take you nowhere.
We gave each student a list of 17 proverbs and asked them to select one and then decipher its meaning. Students put the proverb in their own words and then drew a picture that reflected the saying.
# 3 LIFE IS THE BEST TEACHER
# 16 KNOWLEDGE IS THE LIGHT THAT LEADS TO EVERY WONDER
#14 LOVE IS BLIND
One student drew 12 stars by the proverb “A gift is a fruit from the heart.” Another added a line number 18, beside which he wrote “Love can be its own reward.” A student who chose “Talking is silver, silence is gold” wrote ‘don’t talk, be gold,” and drew a picture of a sparkling ring. Another student explained that “water must go it’s own way” means “you can get your own path.’ He said he’d heard this idea from his mom. Another said “On the road is where you meet friends might mean make new friends and keep the old ones.” When another student commented that she’d heard that from a song, we encouraged everyone to connect the proverbs to what they already knew—for instance, to something they’d heard from their parents or in a song. These connections helped make the meaning of the proverbs clear.
Once students had selected a proverb, they worked with a partner to write a skit about the proverb. This required the students to imagine a storyline. After performing the skits, students decided on two specific scenes that would best show the proverb’s meaning. They made another drawing (with one scene on the top of the paper, and the second scene on the bottom half of the paper) and used this drawing to guide their photography. Students shot their images in the media center, the hallway, the office, the playground—wherever they could find the right background for their story. LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP Look before you leap-part two (in the principal's office)
From the beginning of this project, Denise knew her students would be challenged by the proverbs’ metaphorical nature. The multiple steps helped her students better understand the proverbs. Denise felt that the skits and drawings helped her identify what students were missing—where they needed more details, where their understanding fell short. This project allowed Denise to see and accommodate her students’ varying levels. Some students chose more complex and abstract sayings and pictures, while one or two struggled to the end to clearly comprehend the proverb’s layered meanings.
Denise gained insight into her kids’ abilities and individuality at various points. She recognized one students’ wit and creative intelligence, thanks to her apt and poetic paraphrasing of proverbs. The proverbs students chose gave glimpses into their interests and sometimes their home lives (such as a grandmother’s encouragement and high expectations).
MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK
Honesty is the best policy
Honesty is the best policy, part two
LTP at Sam’s House, Pokhara, Nepal
January 7, 2012
The children at Sam’s House in Pokhara, Nepal spent a few days in June 2011 learning about photography. Sam’s House is a home for abandoned and orphaned children. Our LTP activities involved all 26 of the children, including the toddlers and teenagers. The oldest children were designated as team leaders, and after learning to use the cameras themselves, they were responsible for teaching their younger brothers and sisters. The children made self-portraits, as well as a community portrait about life at Sam’s House.
To do this, they collaborated in making a picture alphabet that describes what is characteristic and special about their lives at the group home. After listing over one hundred words–like dust bin, girl, garden, learn, making tea, queue, questions, respectful, uniform and write–they made photographs representing their two favorites words for each letter. The children then printed their pictures and designed and displayed their finished work.
a picture alphabet from Sam’s House-Pokhara, Nepal
January 7, 2012
S is for SANDALS
T is for TV
N is for NAMASTE
L is for LOVE
Y is for YOGA
LTP in Muhuru Bay, Kenya by Emily Robertson
December 4, 2011
I spent the spring of 2010 learning about the Literacy through Photography process in Katie Hyde’s class at the Center for Documentary Studies. I learned how LTP works, the ideas and theories behind it, and how and where it has been used in the past. I heard about how it was implemented in Burmese refugee villages in Thailand, immigrant towns in Great Britain, and public schools in Tanzania. Then I decided to have a go at it myself, to add one more location to the LTP list: Muhuru Bay, Kenya.
Muhuru Bay is a small village located in the Nyanza Province of Kenya on Lake Victoria. It has one of Kenya’s highest rates of infection for HIV and malaria. Muhuru Bay is an isolated village with no electricity, running water, or paved roads. Due to a complex mixture of tribal and societal traditions, very few females in Muhuru Bay graduate from high school. The only woman in recent memory to go on to university is Rose Odhiambo.
In partnership with the Muhuru community and Duke University, Rose has developed a secondary school for girls. WISER school will provide female students with means of accessing and contributing to community resources and provide Muhuru with a self-sustaining way to address its needs and problems. I travelled to Muhuru Bay as part of a Duke group that collaborated with the WISER school (www.wisergirls.org). I brought with me digital cameras and a small photo printer that could be hooked to our generator, which ran for 3 hours a day. I had little knowledge of Dhuluo, the language spoken by the Luo tribe of this part of Kenya, or the cultural norms and practices of the community. Nevertheless, I was excited to begin working on a LTP project with the Standard 8 students of two of the most under-resourced primary schools in Muhuru.
My first few days were challenging. My English was different from that which the students had learned (as their third language, after Dhuluo and Kiswahili). Also, students were not used to seeing white foreigners—I was only the second or third mzungu, white person, many of them had seen. It was difficult to lead the usual LTP lessons and discussions about photographs and the choices photographers make. On my third day in the classroom, I worried that perhaps I didn’t have the skills or the preparation to carry out the planned LTP project successfully.
And then it all came together on the first day the students began using the digital cameras. This was extremely exciting for most of them, since the only camera they had seen was an old Nikon film camera that an enterprising community member use to take portraits, funeral pictures, and wedding pictures for a fee and then develop the film in the nearest large town. On this day, the students had planned and prepared to take pictures of their community, with the prompt: “What is one thing you would like to show people from another place about Muhuru Bay?” As a class, we filed out of the mud brick building that was Muhuru Junior Academy and began walking around town. One at a time, students would indicate that this was where they wanted to take their picture – of cows, of boats, of chickens and children.
After two hours of walking around the dusty streets of Muhuru, taking turns lining up their three allotted pictures carefully and pressing the button with great concentration, only one student hadn’t yet snapped her shots. Laura, the only girl who had not seemed intimidated by my American accent and white skin, was adamant that she wanted to take a picture of a fish. But not the fish that were sold in the market spread out on colorful kanga or dried by the sun in baskets – a fresh fish, one that had just come from the lake, a symbol of the industry around which the life of Muhuru was based. And so the class trooped to one of the many beaches that dotted the shores of the lake. Here, Laura and the three boys in the class marched up to the fishermen who had just pulled their small wooden boats with many-times-mended sails onto the sandy beach. After a few minutes of conversation, Laura ran back over and excitedly asked me for a camera. She had been given permission to “snap” a fish, the biggest catch of the day – a huge Nile perch.
As Laura’s classmates held the fish and looked on, she carefully took aim, bending her knees and craning her neck to get the fish positioned just how she wanted in the little square screen on the back of the silver camera. And she pushed the button. And readjusted. And pushed again. And once more.
Then we went back to the school, and the students packed up and went home—the girls to haul water or wash dishes at the lake and the boys to herd cows and play soccer. And I went home smiling, remembering Laura’s quest for the fish and the pride on her face when she captured the perfect picture. When I printed off that picture later that evening, I smiled again. A little blurry, because of the excited way her hands moved. A bit unusual in its framing, because of the newness of the idea of constraining a view. But perfect. A perfect representation of Muhuru Bay, of the life source of the town, of Laura’s tenacity and ambition that would hopefully help her succeed in this place.
For more information about WISER, please visit:
http://www.wisergirls.org/
more photographs from students in Uhuru Bay, Kenya
December 4, 2011
“My name is called Peter I come from Muhuru Bay. The main thing which I suggest in this picture is that it is very good for me to see it, because I remember with it how Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. When I saw this picture I think that I am in heaven. Thirdly I like it because when Jesus was going to the heaven he speak with God through praying. The main thing which I suggest the beach is because our grandfathers were praying on the shores of the lake. There are soft dunes that do not hurt my knees.”
-Photograph and text by Peter Odhiambo
“In fact, the girl in the picture is very beautiful short ten years brown girl. She is loved with everyone because she is happy girl…she is always pretending to fly like a bird to go and stay in the moon or the sun, but she can’t do that because she doesn’t have feathers and as we also know, birds of the same feathers fly together.
She is an educated girl and also planning to be a business girl in the future if God wills.”
-Photograph and text by Queen Elizabeth Moya
“My name is Nicholus Oluoch, I am fourteen years old. I was born in a place called Nyatike district. I was the first born in our home and my mother was very happy when she gave birth to me. I was born during clouding at 9:30 am.”
-Photograph and text by Nicholus Oluoch
“If I would be born a boy, I would be just resting and at home I would not be cooking, watching utensils, fetching water and fetching firewood. I would be a doctor or a pilot. I would be just resting while grazing in the field.
At home from school girls are experiencing hard life when they are married and hard pain when giving birth. But with me I don’t like being a girl because of that pain.
I wish I could be a boy so that I could be one boy in our home. In our house we are just have girls only, so I wish to be a boy so I can help my father at home when my sisters have been married.”
-Photograph by Euphemia Clarah
“I write this picture so that the people from other places could know that in Muhuru Bay there are a lake and in this lake there is many fish. The picture shows the mother who carried her child and selling the fish. And the picture tells us how this people of Muhuru are getting money and how they are suffering so that they can get money. How the mothers are sad because no one has bought their fish. And to show how these people are suffering they are selling their properties in the ground.” -Photograph and text by Susan.
Asante!! (and Arusha Education News), from Katie Hyde
September 3, 2010
After another successful summer in Tanzania, Emma Raynes and I would like to extend many thanks to DukeEngage and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for supporting the LTP Arusha DukeEngage program.
A special thanks to Omari Mkombole, Godfrey Augustino, Violet Mlawosa and Ephraim Simbeye at the Arusha Municipal Education Office for endorsing LTP Arusha, sponsoring teacher workshops and making it possible for hundreds of Arusha teachers and thousands of students to become involved.
We are especially grateful to work with Pelle Shaibu, our DukeEngage co-leader and the local coordinator of the year-round LTP Arusha program. Thank you to the team of LTP teachers who has taken a lead in developing and shaping LTP Arusha for several years. This advisory team includes teachers Musa Lumbano, Patrick, Kimbwereza, J. Majaliwa, Evasia, Jane, Isaria, Sarah and Mohammed Abdi.
Finally, we’d like to thank our 2010 DukeEngage student participants: Aadya Despande, Nate Glencer, Ian Harwood, Kirstie Jeffrey, Erin Malone-Smolla, Wilma Metcalf, and Cameron Setzer, as well as Kaitlin Rogers, a Duke graduate who has spent three summers working with LTP Arusha.
Included here is the first edition of the “Arusha Education News,” which students envisioned and produced along with Omari Mkombole and Godfrey Augustino. To read more about the summer 2010 program, please click here: Arusha Education News
In the pictures below Pelle, Sarah and Isaria share examples of Arusha LTP work with local education officers and fellow teachers during LTP trainings.
Learning through Feeling, a reflection by Nate Glencer and Wilma Metcalf
September 3, 2010
This summer we often talked about participatory learning as a core element of LTP. In this broader definition of LTP (learning through participation), the method can be used with students with special needs—such as those with vision impairment.
In working with seven-year-old Lisa Lukas Lawena we attempted to modify LTP by making the images tactile. Using macaroni we created shapes including a square, heart, a circle, and a tree. Though our teaching aids were very rudimentary, they still had their intended impact. Lisa wrote labels for the different objects on a brailler and matched her labels with the different shapes by feeling them first. Throughout the process Lisa was engaged and excited. Much of her enthusiasm grew from reading the words and sentences she had just written. This is the crux of participatory learning. Already a motivated learner, Lisa became even more invested in her work. Instead of a textbook being the authority on learning, Lisa occupied a powerful position of teacher-student.
LTP must be modified to build upon the strengths of blind students—hearing and feeling—and by doing so it remains as useful a method of teaching as in the general student population. What makes LTP a particularly powerful teaching tool is its ability to capture students’ attention and enhance retention by giving students authority to teach themselves and their peers. Because students are working not only to understand material, but also explain it to others they consider it more thoroughly. Instead of copying information verbatim from a blackboard, students must think and act. Learning through feeling, or learning through doing are interpretations of LTP that can be used for the same effect in a blind classroom.
