ABSTRACT
Seen From Within describes Documenting Cultural Communities (DCC), a unit embedded in the International Charter School’s dual language education model. The chapter documents how third-grade students collaborate with teachers and a photographer-in-residence to create photographs and write stories about their own cultural communities. The authors describe how students learn narrative photographic strategies, explore cultural concepts, and develop language learning and literacy in both primary and secondary languages. Students build an understanding of culture through their own experiences, which are presented as parallel narratives that can be compared and contrasted, without privileging or implying a hierarchy or system of dominant/inferior groups. Therefore, each child’s experience—regardless of race, culture, language proficiency, income, or parents’ educational level—is acknowledged, validated, and celebrated. Through this project, all students benefit from maintaining and developing their own cultural identities while learning the similarities and differences of those of their peers.
