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WKCD: The “Home” project required students to combine photography and writing. Did they start with the photography or with the writing?

Julie: It was a mixed process, depending on the student. There were some students who were prolific writers already, and they did their writing first, and then went out to look for images to tell their stories and enhance their writing. Other students who were struggling writers; they may have had a couple of ideas but no real direction. So we sent them home with cameras, they came back and we asked them about their photo—and then the stories, the writing, started coming out. It was really interesting to see how it developed for each student. Students who were more part of an oral tradition, or whose English-speaking skills were more oral, tended to take to the photography first and develop their writing second. Students who were more literate and advanced in their English skills had a lot of their writing done before they got any of their images.

WKCD: How did you introduce the project to your students?

Julie: We used several approaches, including a software package called Inspiration. It’s a mind-mapping software that gets students brainstorming. We did one brainstorm where we asked students to describe their neighborhood and some of the words and adjectives that come to mind. We did another brainstorm asking them to describe their life.

Our main prompt with the students was: Talk about your neighborhood and compare it to your homeland. We pushed them to tease out differences between how they saw their home cultures and their lives in Tucson— between where they came from, where they are now, and where they are going.

We did a lot of journal writing. One of the first assignments was: Go home tonight and on the way home observe everything on your path; when you get into your house, observe how everything is laid out and then hang out in your yard for awhile—and then write a descriptive essay about what you observed. Another prompt was to describe what you remember of your home country.

We did a mapping exercise where the kids had to draw what they thought was a significant part of their neighborhood. Some drew a large block with all the streets in between, and the shopping centers. Others drew just their street. That was all that was important to them—their house, a neighbor’s house, maybe a friend’s house.

WKCD: Any reading?

We read Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and also her newer book Caramelo.  In Caramelo, there are several chapters where she describes every room in her home, in beautiful detail. In another chapter, she captures the smells and sounds of a trip she made back to Mexico. Her imagery is so wonderful and inspiring for students.

We read a collection of essays by young people in Oakland, published by 826 Valencia. They were graphic, hard-core stories about their neighborhoods, gang violence, and other issues that they faced.

We read documents about housing laws in the U.S.—I was trying to get a lot of genres to meet the students’ reading requirements. So we read about renters’ laws, housing prices, finding housing in the US.

We created bound college-reading packets and encouraged students to highlight and annotate their reading. We discussed the readings in class. We asked students to reflect in their journals on what they were reading. I’d read their journals and put prompts next to some of their comments, like: Tell me more about this? What do you mean when you say that sometimes you’re scared in your neighborhood? What do you mean when you say you spend all of your time sleeping in your room?

WKCD: Were there common themes in the students’ writing? How did you help them deepen their themes?

Julie: In terms of their final themes, the ones you see in their final exhibit, certain themes came up again and again: they were bored in the neighborhood, they felt uncomfortable, they missed their home country because they feel isolated here—or their neighborhood had all they had dreamed of.

We talked about finding a focal point, especially what they wanted other people to know about their neighborhood and what they wanted other people to do about it. Some kids then wrote for a specific purpose, like wanting the city to know that they didn’t have a playground or that they didn’t feel safe going outside.

Josh and I asked the students what other words, besides boring, could they use to describe their neighborhood. But invariably, like most American teenagers, they returned to the word “boring” as the most honest expression of how they were feeling.

In truth, what was hard for them to grasp was that while they called it boredom, it was really about isolation: they don’t have the social networks they had in their home country, they don’t talk to their neighbors, the streets in their neighborhood seem empty, there are few public spaces where children can play or adults can socialize. It made me see my own city and community differently. We lead very isolated lives, we are forever busy, we work, come home, maybe hang out with some friends—but we don’t really socialize in our neighborhoods.

That was eye opening for me—and for many people who saw the exhibit.

WKCD: How did the editing process work?

Julie: There was lots of peer discussion and review of each other’s writing. The students would get together in small groups and share what they’d written so far. They would get feedback on whether their ideas were coming across clearly, whether there was a hook at the beginning, whether it was organized in a logical fashion or confusing.

However, peer editing is really difficult with ESL students. Often they make corrections that are errors. So while the revising process was collaborative among the students, the editing process involved a lot of back and forth between Josh or me and the student. What was amazing was that previous to this, getting a second draft out of many of these students was like pulling teeth. With this project, I’d get 6 or 7 drafts from some of the kids.

I’d never seen students so excited or committed to getting it right.

I attribute a lot of that to the fact that they knew their work would be public, that it had a large audience. And as students created their pieces, we had reporters coming in to talk to the students, volunteers, people from the district. That was very motivating. 

WKCD: What, in the end, did students take away from the project?

Julie: With the writing process, students learned about brainstorming, writing, revising, editing, and publishing. With the photography, students would go out and return with one hundred pictures, and we’d talk about what worked and what didn’t, what the photos represented. Then they’d go out and take more pictures. They found the photography fun, but they also realized that to get the image they really wanted took time, patience, and effort—just as it did with their writing.

This year, with our new group of students, I see the same thing. If we teach them the creative process through their imagery, then they’ll apply it in their writing—which is obviously a more difficult task given their language skills.

Some of the students who were involved in the project are now much more confident on campus. We have an ESL student on the student council, and this is a first; he really grew into his own and felt he had something to share with the school.  We have some students who are doing more writing, others who are participating in a poetry-out-loud contest. The students are just more visible and outspoken on campus.

I also see that my colleagues have more of an interest in the students, they understand their life situations better, they talk about a certain student and say, “I never knew before that she was dealing with…” Traditionally, there’s a lot of isolation btw the ESL wing of the campus and the rest of the campus, and it’s been nice to see some of this breaking down.

Another obvious and tangible outcome was that we got funding to continue the project with a new group of students, and it’s expanded.

In terms of the city, things always move slowly, but we have won the attention of one city council member, Nina Trasoff, who has become an ardent supporter of our work. Her office hosted the exhibit, and she’s the one helping us turn the exhibit into a book—she really feels there’s a message there that needs to get out so that people have a better understanding of who is living in our community and what their needs are, especially when it concerns youth. The students’ work on the project has reinvigorated discussion in our community about parks and the need for youth recreation.

The fact that these immigrant and refugee students are now in view, and put themselves in view, is astounding.