Teacher's Guide: Picturing Israel
Using Photography to Explore Israel, Identity, and Perspective | Grades 7–12

Welcome to Picturing Israel. We're glad you're here!

Picturing Israel invites students to explore most important chapters of Israel's history, through photography — to look closely, notice what they might otherwise overlook, and ask questions. It's an approach that's engaging for students, easy for teachers to lead, and genuinely enjoyable for everyone in the room.

The curriculum is designed to spark curiosity, creativity, thoughtful conversation, and personal connection to the land and people of Israel.

Most importantly, this curriculum is meant to work for you and your students. Use what is helpful. Adapt what needs adapting. Spend more time where your students are engaged and less where they are not. You know your classroom best.

You do not need to be a photography expert, and you do not need to cover everything in each lesson. The lesson plans provide a framework; what happens within that framework will be shaped by you and your students.

Here are some helpful guidelines for teaching Picturing Israel.

There Is More Than One Way to See a Photograph

Photography invites interpretation. Two students may look at the same image and notice completely different things. That difference is part of what makes photographs such rich material for conversation.

Rather than looking for the "right" interpretation, encourage students to look carefully and explain their thinking: What do you see in the photograph that makes you say that?

Students may also change their minds as they hear what others notice. Making room for different readings, and perspective of the same image is an important part of the learning.

Give Students Room to Experiment

Student photographs do not need to be literal or immediately understandable. A photograph can communicate through mood, metaphor, texture, light, composition, memory, emotion, or symbolism.

When students are asked to photograph an idea connected to Israel, encourage them to think beyond the most obvious image. Their photographs can be personal, abstract, unexpected, or experimental. Part of the experience is discovering how an idea can become an image.

Treat the Questions as Invitations

Each lesson includes questions to help open up conversation. You do not need to ask all of them. Choose the ones that work for your students, rephrase them in your own voice, add your own, or follow the conversation somewhere you did not expect.

If students become deeply engaged in one question, stay with it. If a question falls flat, move on.

The goal is not to "get through" the lesson plan. The goal is to create a worthwhile encounter with the photographs, ideas, history, and one another.

Photography in the Classroom

Students do not need special cameras or photography experience. Cellphones are perfectly appropriate. If phones are not available, many activities can be adapted using photographs from the curriculum or other available images.

When looking at photographs together, it is helpful to project them on a screen whenever possible. Seeing the same large image allows students to notice details together, point things out to one another, and build a conversation around what they see. A classroom with a projector and screen is therefore ideal, but teachers should feel free to adapt to the technology available.

Your Role in the Conversation

You do not need to have all the answers. In many of these lessons, the teacher's most important role is simply to help students slow down, look and reflect.

A few questions can go a long way:

• What do you notice?
• What makes you say that?
• What else do you see?
• What does this photograph make you feel or wonder?
• Whose perspective are we seeing?
• What might be outside the frame?

Students may disagree about what a photograph means. That is welcome. Encourage them to listen to one another, explain their interpretations, and return to the photograph itself for evidence.

Make the Curriculum Your Own

Every classroom is different. A lesson that generates a lively conversation with one group may unfold very differently with another.

Please feel free to shorten, expand, rearrange, or adapt the lessons. Bring in photographs, questions, or connections that speak to your students and their experiences. Current events may sometimes enter the conversation; at other times, the photographs may offer a welcome opportunity to explore Israel from a different angle.

Unexpected moments are not detours from the curriculum. Sometimes they are where the most interesting learning happens.

We're Here to Help

We hope Picturing Israel will grow through the experiences of the educators and students who use it. Please reach out, picturingisrael@gmail.com, with  questions, ideas, challenges, or feedback. We would love to hear what is working in your classroom and what could work better. Your experiences in the classroom will help us continue to strengthen and develop the curriculum.

We will also offer periodic Zoom sessions for participating teachers. These will be informal opportunities to look ahead at upcoming lessons, share experiences and adaptations, ask questions, troubleshoot challenges, and learn from one another.

One Last Thought

At its heart, Picturing Israel is about learning to look: at photographs, at Israel, at one another, and perhaps at familiar ideas in unfamiliar ways.

Give your students room to notice, question, create, disagree, reconsider, and surprise themselves.

There is no single way to picture Israel. That's the point.