‘We Are Canton’ portrait exhibit to premiere Nov. 16

Canton High School English teacher Kate Kelly has taught a professional development course that deals with race, gender and sexuality to teachers over the last few years, based on the curriculum for the American Identities class that she teaches to CHS students. Both classes are designed to allow for personal reflection on biases that people hold. At the end of each course for educators, teachers have the same question for Kelly: How can we take this out into our community so that it’s not just an isolated thing?

CHS English teacher Kate Kelly

Kelly used her belief that communication is the way to begin to solve big problems and created “We Are Canton,” a free exhibition of photos and captions that will be held from November 16-19 in the gymnasium at the Rodman Early Childhood Center and is open to the public. Nearly 550 members of the Canton school system are participating in the event, the youngest of whom is 3 years old.

Kelly decided to model “We Are Canton” after Humans of New York, a blog and bestselling book by photographer Brandon Stanton that features anonymous photos of New Yorkers and their responses to questions about their lives.

“I have a passion for photography,” Kelly explained. “Images are so powerful.”

She decided to recruit students from CHS who are interested in art to take photographs of faculty and students who were answering questions about themselves.

“I reached out to Patricia Palmer, who teaches art and photography at Canton High,” Kelly said. “She wanted to collaborate. She’s really helped me a lot.”

Student photographers and Kelly took photographs of the participants, while other students asked them to answer a question such as “Everyone has a story … what’s your story?” or “If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Why?”

Every student received an invitation to be a part of “We Are Canton,” along with a permission slip. Once Kelly had all the paperwork together, the real work began. “The scheduling was the biggest hassle,” she said.

The students traveled to the Hansen, Luce and Kennedy schools during one day-long field trip and also made a trip to the Galvin Middle School to interview students at lunch. At CHS, 300 students were interviewed during their lunch period over the course of two weeks. The high school students were photographed in different places in the building.

All participants saw a list of the questions before the interviews but did not know which one they would be asked. “You really get to hear their voice,” Kelly said.

It took a month to collect all the photographs and captions, which are displayed on 8.5×11-inch sheets of paper. A committee of teachers and students worked with Kelly to put together the photos and captions.

As with the Humans of New York stories, no names are used, allowing viewers to focus on the words. Two of the participants are young men who graduated from Canton High School and are now serving in the military. They returned to their alma mater to do some recruiting while interviews were taking place. Their stories are part of the exhibit.

“It’s been such a fun process,” Kelly said. “The photographers got a chance to show their talent. Kids just love to talk to each other. In our meeting after school today, a student and a teacher summed this project up perfectly. A student said, ‘Not gonna lie, Ms. Kelly. These answers touch my heart a little bit.’ A teacher said, ‘Meetings like this are what keep me in the game.’”

The student photographers are Meryl Prendergast, Zoe Zekos, Shelby Luongo, Abby Capraro, Abbie Burchard, Anastasiya Bondarenko and Kyra Gaboury. Student interviewers and helpers behind the scenes are Noeli Fernandez, Kiyana Aldin, Katherine Stark, EJ Dummott, Jess Giglio, Rose Hazam, Venice Morris, Maddie McDonough, Emily Ferzoco, Alanna Slayton, Emily Demaggio, Jormani Feliz, Dillon Anderson, Xavier Machuga, Alexandra Boone, Taylor Carrington, and Taylor Newayno. Teachers and others from the Canton Public Schools who worked with Kelly over the summer and continue to help are Assistant Superintendent Jen Henderson, TV production teacher Ed McDonough, whose students made a promotional video, and summer committee teachers Kristen Morgan, Sara McDonald, Diane Keverian, Phyllis Morgan, Kevin Ng, Joanne Teliszewski, Sharyn Hallal, Jayne Moore, and Tina Hayes.

“We Are Canton” will be open on Wednesday and Thursday, November 16 and 17, from 4-8 p.m., Friday, November 18, from 3-5 p.m., and Saturday, November 19, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon.

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Nov 11 2016. Filed under News, Schools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.