Danelle, age 38, and Na’Tajia, age 12
Intergenerational Description of Joint Project:
Na’Tajia and Miss Danelle teamed up through Big Brothers Big Sisters in-school mentoring program. Miss Danelle saw the announcement of contest. What a great activity for us to do together! Na’Tajia was extremely excited… She loves to write and discovered also that she likes to take pictures of nature.
Celebration of Rachel Carson’s Sense of Wonder:
This was a great project that the two of us could work on right at school. It was only fitting that we explored what nature lurked around the school… surprising to the both of us how much we discovered in an inner city middle school. We took so many pictures!
Essay and photos:
The Beauty of Nature at School
I go to school at in the city of Durham, NC. Being in the city, one may not think there is beauty around. I beg to differ….but when you look around you can find lots of cool things. Miss Danelle and I took pictures of the same thing… but funny, each thing looks very different. Come see the different points of view from Miss Danelle and me both in the pictures we took and the comments we make about each other’s pictures.
Miss Danelle’s Picture – Na’Tajia’s Words:
I enjoy looking at nature around my school. I saw this blossoming tree and I had to get a close up after Miss Danelle took this picture (see my picture below;-) I think it’s very pretty.
Na’Tajia’s Picture – Miss Danelle’s Words:
Na’Tajia has such a keen eye for the beauty in a single item. I especially like how she captured the natural sunlight on the tree blossoms below. The vibrant pink and the bright green just bursts through this picture. Who would guess such beauty exists just outside the door and just below the window at school?
Miss Danelle’s Picture – Na’Tajia’s Words:
Ms. Danelle was looking for some bugs on the ground . She found ants all over outside the playground. In the picture below, the ants are scattered in the grass, in the hard brown dirt and on the tree root around the rock. You would have to use the zoom on the camera to see the millions of tiny ants. Bugs are helpers in nature because they make the flowers look pretty.
Na’Tajia’s Picture – Miss Danelle’s Words:
Same area, completely different aspect of nature. See up close the ant hills… I did not even notice them when I took my shot, but yet Na’Tajia so carefully captured this living haven right outside in the school’s playground area.
Na’Tajia’s Picture – Miss Danelle’s Words:
The story behind these next two pictures is there is actually a team of tiny little ants marching their way through this wonderfully rich area of dried leaves, acorn shells, sticks, moss, pine needles and North Carolina Clay. We both tried hard to capture the ants (they are in the shot, but they blend in so well with the ground cover), but instead we captured two different perspectives of this small area. Below is Na’Tajia’s perspective.
Miss Danelle’s Picture – Na’Tajia’s Words:
The little black bugs were moving so fast , it was hard for Ms. Danelle to catch the shot. I saw her running around chasing the bugs. In this picture, she captured a nature on the ground. You can see nuts, sticks, leaves and rocks.
