Snapshots of our Work, our Class, and our Community

I would love to receive funding for a digital camera for my ninth and tenth grade English classroom. I teach at Oakland High School and although our funding is low, the students' energy for learning and technology has expanded into a new realm of education. There are several projects that we have worked on without the use of a digital camera due to a lack of funding. Instead, I have used a disposable camera to make up for that absence and the students do not have the control or the ability to capture or edit images. I also think that the students feel a greater sense of interest and value when they are able to gain access to newer tools. Often, my students receive broken books, old desks and broken chairs. A new item in the classroom will brighten their days. A project that my students have been wanting to work on is a classroom scrapbook. One scrapbook would be made of the English One class and another scrapbook would be made of the English Two class. We want to take pictures of our class accomplishing work and have it on display. Due to a lack of space, I am forced to take down student work. However, with a digital camera we will be able to capture the work and place it in the scrapbook. Students would be able to use their artistic and creative abilities to decorate the scrapbook. I have noticed that students love to see photographs of themselves on the wall and look at photographs of their friends. Having a scrapbook would give the students a sense of self-worth and ownership in their English classroom. I often have visitors in my classroom and I always show them the work I do with my students, but I would also like my students to be able to show their work and their pictures in this wonderful mini-English yearbook. Another activity that I would like to accomplish either this school year or next school year is an assignment where students take photographs around their neighborhood during lunch or before school. We will walk together around the school campus and take photographs of any image that strikes us as poetic. Then we will come back to the classroom and draw our own lines of poetry based off our images. Not only will they be able to write creative poetry but they will also be able to see using a more poetic eye and vision. Another project that we are constantly working on is creating our own plays based off the work we are reading. Currently, we are reading "Romeo and Juliet" and we have organized plays with original screenplay and background. I would love to have photographs of our scenes and acting on display. Furthermore, a digital camera with a recording feature will allow us to re-view our theatre production and focus on our volume, clarity and intonation. Having a digital camera in the classroom will allow my students to create and recreate the history that occurs in their society, both inside and outside of our classroom.