The Challenge

Behailu offered graphic design and photography courses to their after-school students. I was tasked with teaching them to use the Adobe Suite and the fundamentals of graphic design. What curriculum strategy will empower young high school students to excel at learning the principals of graphic design, the tools and basics of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and inDesign, while creating higher self esteem and exploring themselves and their own power?

The Solution

After my first semester at Behailu, the second semester allowed me to refine and change my approach. Students were not interested in the technicalities of graphic design or learning about the pen tool; I realized quickly I needed to engage them in a different, more meaningful way. The one thing teenagers are most intrigued with? Themselves. I made sure to incorporate self-exploration throughout the remainder of the curriculum. Quickly, the projects they were completing were beautiful, honest, and skilled. View full curriculum here.

Looking inward: Photoshop Portrait Double Exposure Self-Portraits

Objective: Students will learn to give a productive critique of each others work. Every student will have a chance to show their work but will not talk about it until after we critique it. We will start on a new tutorial about typography and image and how to combine them effectively.

Exploring Emotions and Movement: Black and White Self-Portraits

Objective: Students are going to use their photography and Photoshop skills to explore how to express emotion and movement through their own portraits.

Power In the Palm Of Your Hand Photoshop Collage

Objective: Students will work together to take photographs of their own hands and through design and self reflection, they will envision what lies in the palm of their own hands, acknowledging their own power to attain their dreams and goals.

Poetry Partnership

Objective: Partnering with the Behailu poetry class, we will be taking students poems and laying them out on a poster for them to display while combining visuals that represent the poem.

Wildest Imagination: Surrealism

Objective: Students are going to use their wildest imagination and put our Photoshop collaging skills to the test. Jumping into what Surrealism is and the history of surrealism, students will then create their own surrealist scenes.