Last month, my family celebrated our 2016 family reunion in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. Select photos from the event are displayed below.
Category: Museums
JOURNEY TO MY ROOTS :: The Educational Stops
While in South Africa last summer, I was enlightened at the Apartheid Museum, especially when I considered the parallels to life here in the US. Even more exciting was the fact that South Africa came out of apartheid and still continues to keep dialogue going about race relations and how to make things better. We also ventured to President Nelson Mandela’s house in Soweto. While in South Africa, you cannot help but notice the beauty all around you.
Ringing in the New Year in the ATL
I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Atlanta with my friend and see how the city has changed and catch up with old friends. We went to the revamped Coca Cola center, took a CNN tour, and visited the High Museum of Art. We also went to my old stomping grounds – Oglethorpe University – and saw the new and improved student center. Here are select images from this trip. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Photographs at a Catholic Cathedral
A few weeks ago, my brother and I went to a DC Catholic Cathedral to shoot around. I was partially interested in the venture because I wanted to see what he could do with the camera, so that I could possibly hire him on to be a second shooter for me at weddings and events and portrait sessions. Well, it was clear to me, that we definitely have different photographic interests: I prefer people, he prefers scenes! Nonetheless, we were able to capture some nice images with and without people. Here are some of the images from this session. The images of me are compliments of my brother, Darren Payne (thanks bro)!
The Day the School Became a Museum…
If you’ve been following my blog lately, you are probably aware of my love for children and desire to teach. To this end, I have been completing my practicum at a Northeast DC Public School. Last week, the school had it’s annual “Museum” in which each classroom becomes a gallery with artifacts and students to explain each artifact. Members of the community are invited as well as parents, and each student gets an opportunity to visit other classrooms to see what they have put together for the day. The exhibits ranged from a fish fry to dancing mice (children dressed as mice, and not the actual rodents, thankfully) to interactive story books to shaving cream paintings. In this post, I have included some of my favorite exhibits from the museum.
If you remember my “I still have hope“ post, you will remember that I tried my hand at painting and came up with a decent representation of the Obama Hope campaign logo. This time around, I flexed my drawing muscles… and again, I won’t quit my day job, but you can tell that I was drawing the Titanic! Thankfully, children are not too hard to please when it comes to painting or drawing!
Ever since I started planting seeds in planters in my home back in the spring, I have had this love for plants, seeds, and flowers. There are many ways to incorporate plants into an elementary lesson from science (photosynthesis) to math (probability and measurement). I will definitely use these in my classroom!
Now the “Fish Fry” will be a little harder for me to incorporate into the classroom – not because I cannot see a connection to the academic content, but because I want to teach my students about healthy nutritional choices. Regardless, this teacher had her students’ attention (and appetites).
Most of the time when you see a real fish in a classroom, they are swimming around in a fish tank. But what about teaching students how to remove scales from fish? Real life skills!
One of my first experiences with shaving cream was when I was in elementary attending a friend’s birthday party/sleepover. That night, we sprayed some shaving cream into the hands of the first girl who fell asleep, and then we tickled her feet with a feather. To my credit, I did not come up with this idea, but I did not stop it! Well, at this Elementary School’s Museum, one of the teachers found a better use for shaving cream. In this picture, students were using the shaving cream to mix colors and create beautiful pictures. It looked like a lot of fun, and it seemed easy enough to clean up!
Don’t you remember those art projects we made in elementary and then gave to our parents with the hopes that they would stick them on the refrigerator?
Now the only time I remember cooking in grade school was when I took a Home Ec. class in high school… At the school’s museum, students had the opportunity to work together to make muffins from a box.
What if I told you that these were the muffins the students made? Would you believe me? Well, I think these muffins were store-bought, but I’d imagine that the students’ muffins did not look to far away from these.
In the music room, students had the opportunity to play the keyboard, bongos, maracas, and tambourines to a song.
Historical Perspectives…
If you went to Oglethorpe University, you will recognize this project title from the Junior Year Core Classes. For whatever reason back then, I did not have an appreciation for the historical perspectives that were shared with the exception of one of the books we read (I did like the other Core classes though). At the time, we read ancient texts, like Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which wasn’t entirely bad, it just wasn’t something that I was going to pick up on my own. Perhaps that is one of the goals of higher education – to expose people to other perspectives, other literature, and other cultures.
Well being in the Nation’s Capital, I am constantly reminded of our early beginnings as a country. This happens when I’m downtown and I see the Washington Monument standing high and proud in the sky or when a newly formed political party decides to have a “Restoring Honor” rally at a historic site… Regardless, I have made several trips to really see the DC area landmarks during the past year, and its exciting because almost everywhere you go, you will be a part of the masses from US citizens to people from Asian countries to the citizens African, European, and other Eastern nations. You will hear different languages spoken. You will see an abundance of cameras (I think you’ll see more Nikons than Canons, and I am not biased). You will attempt to catch a clear view of one of the monuments, and then people will walk right in front of you and your camera, so much so that you will then decide to make the people the subjects of your images, and just let the monuments be the backdrops. Perhaps that was just my approach, but I think I have painted you a vivid enough picture. Now allow me to show you what my Nikon and I captured in Downtown DC!
Images below are from the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflection Pool, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the National Mall, the Potomac River, the World War II Memorial, and all of the places in between!
