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Unique Writing Project Spawns Some Creative Thinking


How many students, including adult learners, need some extra help to communicate effectively in writing? Across the United States, this number reaches into the millions.

a picture is worth... is a unique book produced through collaboration between I-LEAD Charter School in Reading, PA and Threshold Collaborative, a teaching, consulting and capacity building organization. Reading has one of the worst performing school systems in the nation. Students wrote and recorded personal essays in a project that combined writing with modern technologies to teach the vital skills of literacy, critical thinking and communication.

The 16 students who contributed essays used their skills in essays on school, family life and personal struggles. The book includes links to audio recordings of the essays and QR codes that allow access to the audio files on mobile devices via QR reading apps.

a picture is worth… came out of a partnership between two organizations. Threshold Collaborative is a Vermont-based nonprofit and uses “story as a catalyst for change.” In keeping with that, their projects revolve around storytelling: Poets Shack, A Picture is Worth, Dreamcatcher, Local Yarns, Conversations with Farm Women. I-LEAD School in Reading provides 9th through 12th grade students who are disconnected from school with the opportunity to re-engage in their education and transition successfully into adulthood.

Thinking Creatively About The Program:

That long lead-in was necessary in order to clarify the program elements. Now that the key parts of the program are clear, creative social innovators can play with them to create new programs or to target new groups with the same needs.

The elements of a picture is worth...—literacy training, at-risk or struggling students, new technology and training in critical thinking—can work in other settings and for other education goals. Creative thinking can reveal many ways to adapt or modify each of those elements to create new, yet related, education programs.

Variations Of The Program:
The easiest way to adapt that program is to simply imagine it being used in other school systems. Could high school students in another school system benefit from this curriculum? Of course. Students in many other school systems perform well below expectations in various ways. Reading, PA is not unique in this regard.

The logic of this education program could be extended to other audiences or other types of technology:

  • Could there be a photography project where students produce and share photo essays of their families and neighborhoods? Someone has probably done that.
  • Could the essay project be used in another context, like a juvenile detention facility or in a literacy program for adults? Perhaps so.
  • Everything described here, and in a picture is worth... could be used overseas as well to signify the unifying power of storytelling. Of course the curriculum materials would need to be modified.
Social entrepreneurs, teachers and nonprofit executives in the field of education might be able to use the a picture is worth...curriculum, or just the program idea. In a school setting, Threshold Collaborative and I-LEAD have resources to help out. Adapting a similar program to another setting or audience might take more work but could be worth the effort.

This post, then, illustrates two basic elements of creative thinking: (1) be willing to steal ideas and (2) be willing to transform an idea, including both adding or dropping elements. The a picture is worth... program could be adopted at another school, or used with photography or with group blogging instead of personal essays.


(Visit www.apictureisworth.org for more information on this program, plus some photographs, audio files and other resources.)
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