Boys and Girls

Let me start by saying this is not a "oh, look at me!" type deal. Yes, it's about me and what I'm doing right now. But really, I hope that sharing this will inspire you to act on your passion and to realize that you don't have to be anyone other than yourself (imperfections and all) to impact the world. I mean seriously, I have anxiety and sometimes I stutter and can't put words together in a coherent sentence. But, I refuse to let that stop me.

Toward the end of the summer, I went to the Baptist Children's Home in Thomasville, NC. I was going there as a video intern with NC's Baptist Campus Ministries to do a story on the intern working at the home. The youth there had so much sass and attitude but I wanted to be in their lives right away.

Backing up a bit, I decided in March of this year that I wanted to teach photography/photojournalism/videography (I'll just say photography for short) to high schoolers in a low-income area. While I was at the Children's Home, one of the boys asked if he could take a picture; I immediately freaked out and excitedly said (or yelled) yes!

See, the thing is, society sees children who are products of broken homes as doomed to brokenness. All I see is something beautiful and world-changing waiting to happen. I believe that we are each given passions and purposes; I want to at least attempt to help someone find theirs. Maybe every student I teach goes on to do something other than photography... but, if I can somehow help them find their passion through my class, I would be so happy.

One problem is that I will not graduate with an education degree therefore, I will not have a teaching license and cannot teach in a high school right away. Okay, bummer. But, I've been considering pursuing lateral entry and if I still feel like I need to be in a physical school to teach, I will move in on that after I grow more in my personal knowledge of photography.

But, I have this extreme passion and I need to do something about it now. I don't want to go through my last semester of college the same way I've gone through each semester. I want to act on my passion. Long story short, after sharing this with our school's community engagement coordinator, she hooked me up with Shelby's Boys and Girls Club where I've taught photography to a few middle schoolers every Friday for the last four weeks.

So far I've had one half good/half bad day, one extremely bad day, and two fairly decent days. The extremely bad day was the second day I was there. Our class lasted for about 3 minutes because I couldn't get their attention and they were just not interested in what I had to say at all. After that day I seriously questioned how effective I would be at this and even questioned whether I was wrong in thinking this was my passion. The next week they were interested and even listened to me about 70% of the time (which is miraculous in my opinion)! The lady in charge of the club also told me how much she respected me for putting myself out there like this and was super encouraging to me.

At the moment there are only three girls in the class but today three boys and a girl asked if they could join the class! The three girls I have right now are really talented and when they listen to me they really apply it well to their images. It's cool because they all have their own style already and they seem to be slightly open to learning (I don't expect them to be completely open, but any opening is better than completely closed).

I'll try to update this every week to let everyone know how it's going. Also, if you have ANY advice or recommendations or anything... please please please let me know! And, if you're the praying kind, I could use it! I'm not anyone special and I'm hardly even good at this. But, like I said, I believe we all are given passions for a reason; I'm just trying to figure out the reason for mine. This is a process, and I want to share it with you (and keep track of it myself).

I'll end with some photos they took today:

Photo by: Maya

Photo by: Jada

Photo by: Lou Lou