Who Is This Being? by Gracy Malkowski. "Who stares at me? Their luminous eyes stare into my own. They seem to know all about me, able to see through my disguise. They're the only ones who keeps my secret, or does despair show through? Covering lies."

"There were a lot of emotions in that class," said Ana Maria Pachon, a former student of the photography class taught by Lynne Bernay-Roman. "Sometimes we’d laugh and sometimes cry. She taught us the basics of photography. At the same time, she made an example of things in our lives."

With her Finding Focus Through Photography curriculum, Lynne Bernay-Roman seems to have found the perfect way to blend her experience as a licensed clinical social worker and her earlier years as an artist in Chicago. By helping teens see the connection between making images and making sense of their lives, Bernay-Roman also helps her students make sense of school.

Bernay-Roman teaches her curriculum in Palm Beach County schools, thanks to support from Communities in Schools, a national nonprofit organization that is dedicated to funding programs that will help keep kids in school. CIS seeks grants to cover the cost of the program, then educators at area schools can appeal to CIS to have the program brought to their school.

Last year, the nine-week course was taught in two eighth-grade critical thinking classes at Lantana Middle school, after teacher Laura McDonald approached CIS. Two other schools who received the program both cater to students who are at risk of failing school. The high school, Educational Resource Center, was able to offer it as an elective, and at the Middle School of Choice, the course was incorporated into the classroom for sixth graders.

Bernay-Roman developed the program four years ago, when she was looking for a more dynamic way to work with young people than those offered in her field of social work. Her lesson plans have evolved into a broad ranging curriculum that meets the needs of sixth through twelfth grade students. Bernay-Roman has copyrighted them under her non-profit company, Visual Voices Unlimited, Inc., and hopes to make them available to other educators who will be able to mirror their success.

Seeing, Feeling, Photographing
Class assignments are intended to help students get in touch with themselves and the world around them, while also teaching about formal elements of visual expression, such as line, color, light and patterns. Bernay-Roman’s enthusiasm is persistent and it motivates reluctant students to express their emotions or take creative risks. "You have to find the perfect picture, so it makes you have to search inside yourself," Samantha Bear, a student at Lantana, said. "It was kind of confusing to get used to. "

"When they are doing patterns," Bernay-Roman explains, "they're supposed to find and photograph, ‘What are the patterns in your life, that you repeat. And in light and shadow, what lightens you, brightens your life, what direction is that coming from.’ "

The Many Textures of My Emotions, by Breanna Pekar. "My emotions hit many directions, up, down and round and round, rough-textured until I can smooth them down."

Last year, teachers at Lantana Middle School were alerted to one boy’s need for counseling by the dark nature of the images and captions he created. Principal Ann H. Clark said that the program has allowed them to help students they might otherwise have overlooked. "Because they have hooked up with an adult, there is a bond," Clark said, "They tell us things going on in their lives and we can help the child."

"Doing the Circle"—The Group Process
"I love the group process," Bernay Roman said. That’s the part of the class Ana Maria Pachon calls "doing the circle," her favorite part. It is a vital aspect of how Bernay-Roman gets these students—many of them wary and disaffected—to bond with each other.

Students sit facing one another and critiquing each other’s photographs in a setting that allows them to learn to appreciate different views. "They're so used to critiquing as an unpleasant thing," Bernay-Roman explained, "as a bad, judgmental kind of thing." Through her method, they experience critiquing as a way to voice your opinion and say what you think in a constructive way.

Pachon, now 20, has graduated from the Educational Resource Center. Ana said the class helped her change her mind about school. "I had one view, that school wasn’t important. Then this class helped me to see that school is going to help me be a better person." The class was good for her at the time because she says she learned that "there's lots of ways to go through life…a teenager paying bills, living with boyfriends or roommates, and not always the best influences. [Bernay-Roman] made everything seem a lot better in life, it's not just 'Oh, nobody cares'."

Fourteen year-old Bridgit Casablanca values the freedom of expression the class encourages. "They'll give us, like, ‘Take a picture of a shadow,’ and you go to take the picture your own way, how you want it. Other classes will force you to do something in a way you really don’t want to do."

Bridgit Casablanca, self-portrait. "I’m trapped behind the gates of life searching for myself. Where am I to look and where will I find myself, I search high and low and far and near, but I still have the questions in my mind."

In the high school class, the program includes a job shadow, a field trip and a public showing of the photos. For the job shadow, students spend a day with a local professional photographer (wedding, newspaper, portrait, etc.), choosing from among those who agreed to participate, and then write about their experience. For all the classes, it is the writing of captions and titles that presents the greatest challenge, especially for the facilitator.

Learning to See
"The age groups are really different," Bernay-Roman says. "The younger kids were more open, their vision isn’t locked up by any kind of concepts, so everything is a picture."

The caption writing part of the class requires the students to pull out of themselves their own feelings and thoughts about a subject, and then connect those with words. "During the beginning of the class, it's exciting because there is this balancing gong on, I have to help the depressed ones to find a picture and the hyper ones to narrow down," Bernay-Roman said.

Bernay-Roman sits with the students one on one. Working hard to get past "I don’t know," she tries to get them to express how they feel by rephrasing questions. Employing infinite patience, she poses the questions from fresh angles, teaching them to find new perspectives, new ways to see and new ways to focus on a subject.

"I learned I shouldn’t be afraid to speak my mind," said Karlie Rock of Lantana Middle. "I really wouldn’t put in the input to everything because I was scared at the beginning. "

In class, Bernay-Roman shows lots of pictures. "I think the more that you see, the more that you realize is possible, that anything is possible, it's just how you do it," Bernay-Roman said. One photo assignment is an exercise in perception, making the familiar seem unusual, and the unusual seem familiar. It’s all part of thinking creatively.

"Confusing" by Brad Hall

Building Self-Esteem, and Keeping Students in School
The public display of photographs, which often takes place in community settings outside the schools, is a powerful boost for students. The Mayor of Lantana presented awards at the Town Hall last year. Afterward, the photos were put on display in the school media center. "Students would literally wait by the door in the morning so they could file by those pictures and look at what their friends had done,” said McDonald. “And teachers would come up to me and say, ‘I never knew so-and-so had that inside them.’"

Usually, the Finding Focus Through Photography program is scheduled as the last class on Friday afternoon. And it works. Students finish the school week According to Bernay-Roman, that is because in her class, ‘They get to be the focus. Their ideas are important. Even if it's different, it's good. Even if it is something unusual, it has value."

Lantana Middle School Principal Clark added, "The relationships and self esteem [this program] is building in kids is priceless, and these are kids that sometimes don’t get noticed."

Having seen the results over two years, Laura McDonald said she will reapply for a grant as often as necessary. "It doesn’t matter what your administrators or the school board or the President says about what kids need," McDonald said, "you first must try to reach them in unconventional ways."

Lynne Bernay-Roman can be reached at LBernayRoman@visualvoicesunlimited.com

Resources:

• Two other programs that also use photography to reach and teach students are:
• Literacy Through Photography, a program of Fotofest, a non-profit, international arts and education organization based in Houston, Texas. Literacy Through Photography is taught in 44 schools, by 81 teachers, serving approximately 2,000 students in the 3rd to 12th grades.
  ImageMakers National Photography Program
• Funded by the Circuit City Foundation and delivered through Boys and Girls Clubs nationwide, ImageMakers encourages girls and boys to learn and practice photography. The national initiative delivers a state-of-the-art photography curriculum, photographic resources and local, regional and national recognition through an annual photography contest.
• Lynne Bernay-Roman has information on her program on the Web

Letitia Monaco is a freelance writer living in Jupiter, Florida.