a small town recovers from Hurricane Irene

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Tuesday, November 8, 2011 | 5 photos

On a recent visit to a small town in upstate New York that had been devastated by Hurricane Irene, I couldn’t help but walk along Main Street and notice the images all around me. Each image I saw told a story of a person, a family, a home, a memento or a memory. Citizens were angry, sad, but most of all resilient. Some lost homes, others lost lives, but I saw an entire town working together to rebuild and move on. Sometimes the images were sad, sometimes ironic and sometimes heartwarming but everywhere I looked I saw a story. With these 5 photos I hope that I was able to convey a few of those stories to you.
I am a high school science teacher in Brooklyn, New York who works with students that have learning disabilities. Every student learns in a different way, but the common thread is story telling. Whether that story comes from movies, words, or photographs, students remember and internalize characters rather than famous scientists and stories rather than scientific facts. It is always my goal to find the narrative in science and teach it from a human perspective. I try to use my own photographs as much as possible to help tell the stories of science because they are personal to me. The more personal I can make my course, the more my students will see my passion for exploration and our natural world. As an educator it is my hope to inspire my students to learn from our wonderful planet. I don’t believe that any facts they memorize will stick with them for a lifetime, but I do hope that I am somehow able to inspire an awe in the natural world that my students can carry with them forever.