“A picture is worth a thousand words”, or so the adage says. Teachers from TFFT’s partner schools proved this for themselves when they took the Literacy Through Photography introductory workshop last July 21. TFFT was lucky to have met Katie Hyde, main facilitator of the LTP Program in Tanzania. In a lunch meeting arranged by Kaitlin Rogers (herself an alumna of Arusha-DukeEngage LTP Program) with Katie and her colleagues Pelle Shaibu and Annaliese Gegenheimer, TFFT was able to get to know more about this method. Since the focus of the TFFT’s Teachers Training Program has always been development of critical and creative thinking among children through the use of child-centered and participatory methodologies, we got so interested with LTP. We were thankful that they acquiesced to our request to hold a workshop with our teachers on short notice.

Literacy through Photography is a student-centered critical pedagogy that integrates writing and photography into classroom instruction. In the workshop, our teachers found out how LTP can also mean Literacy through Participation, or Play, or Peers. The method allows the students to present concepts in visual images and to use their imagination to write stories or compositions based on the perspective of a person in a picture.

The exercises prepared by the facilitators got the 22 teachers reading photographs, writing essays based on historical photos, and trying their hand in taking pictures relevant to the subjects they are teaching. The facilitators were impressed with our teachers—clearly, they said, these teachers have received trainings before on participatory methods. The participants’ outputs were very impressive considering they were given only a limited time to do it. The teachers were also given an opportunity to ask questions on how this method can be applied in their classes given the resources they have in school. Correcting the impression that LTP can only be relevant to English or Kiswahili, Katie and Annaliese gave examples of how LTP method can be used in Mathematics, Science, Civics, Geoggraphy, and Lifeskills.

It was a fun day for sure for the teachers. Incidentally, this is also the first time that I was able to gather teachers from all 4 partner schools together in one workshop so the teachers really enjoyed meeting other teachers and comparing notes about their schools. A follow-up workshop is arranged for November where the same participants will meet again to present their LTP projects