I’m here bright and early at Roca. I’m trying to get more involved with Healthy Families and I am trying to get to know the younger mothers. This means getting up for their first period parenting classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the local high schools. I am hoping that by getting to know the young people at school, the Healthy Families youth workers will allow me to go along on the home visits. Anisha and Molly want me to be a part of the home visits, but the Healthy Families coordinator has been against it because she thinks having another person in the home will make the visits less affective. I’m hoping that if I get to know the girls first, she will let me come along.
Today I am teaching with Healthy Families during lunch and then with Project Sol in the early afternoon. I always get nervous the night before teaching. It’s the same as test taking, I get very nervous before but during I am calm and focused. I should be collecting the first group of cameras from the Healthy Families group today. I have a long list of topics for the girls to write about and/or photograph on during and after class. I wanted to leave the topics for journaling and photographing very open ended, but the girls react better when I give them very specific questions. I am hoping that by having them tape a list of questions into their journal, it will make adding to the journal less daunting.
Here is a list of questions I am going to give them today.
Topics to Write on:
1. Who was in the room with you when you gave birth? Why? If you are pregnant, who will be there and why?
2. Describe your child’s birth. When did you realize you were in labor? Where were you? Who drove you to the hospital? How long did it take? Did you take drugs? What do you remember of the experience?
3. When did you realize you were pregnant? Where were you? How did you feel? Who was the first person you told?
4. Make a time-line of your pregnancy by month and write down how you remember feeling (physically and or mentally) each month.
5. Bring in old photos that you want to write about. Amanda will scan them and then print out a copy for you to put in your journal. Do you have favorite photos from your pregnancy or from when your child was younger?
6. Bring in old photos of you and your baby’s daddy from when you both were the age of your child now. What parts of you did your baby get? What parts of your baby’s personality are yours? What parts are his/her daddy’s?
7. What was your relationship with your baby’s daddy when you found out you were pregnant? (how long had you known each other? Were you dating?) What is it now?
8. What have been the most fun parts of being a mom? What have been the most difficult parts?
9. How did you buy for your baby before he or she was born? Did you decorate a room or a part of the house for him/her?
10. How did your friends and family react when you told them you were pregnant? How did they act throughout the pregnancy and how do they react to you after you became a mother?
With Project Sol I prepared a PowerPoint that includes their own work and the work of Jim Goldberg and Dan Eldon. I am trying to get across the point that they have something interesting and unique to say about their own lives because they are the only ones who are living it. I am also emphasizing that words can add context and change the meaning of photographs. We are going to go to a park in the area to photograph today because it is an amazing 50 degrees in Boston today.
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