#WhyYouMatter Portraits
The Student Opening
While we had first thought that we would have an assembly schedule for this day, we ended up deciding to go at it a different way. We gave first and fifth hour teachers the option to take their classes around to view the photos, for as long as they wished. We wanted to respect their busy schedules. To our pleasant surprise, almost all of the teachers took their kids out and around the building to view the photos. It was awesome.
After viewing the photos, teachers came back with their classes and talked about it. They had more discussions, more conversation, and allowed kids to really process how this project affected them. At the end of their hour, students were given blank response sheets and were asked to write how this project impacted them on the paper. Anonymously of course. Kids on the committee picked up the papers from the teachers and taped them up with all the responses from the night before. This was our only way to really understand what the students were getting from the project... and we were blown away by the responses. This is when we realized the power of what we had just done.
Students were also given the chalk markers and could write on the "Why I Matter" and "Why You Matter" walls as well. They LOVED this!
