The Happiness/Wellness Project

What are the keys to happiness? What can we do to help ourselves be happy even through life's ups and downs? What keeps us resilient, optimistic, makes us smile, and helps us believe in ourselves as lovable and capable in this world?

These questions were chosen as the topic to be explored by my grade 11 photography class to address through photography. They will communicate visually, in their photographs, healthy choices that help us become resilient and strong beings. We will look at happiness and health as it includes the physical, social, emotional, spiritual and environmental concerns.

After researching this topic and brainstorming ideas, students will take digital photographs that will be printed as full pages. These will be displayed in the library at the school, and later be presented as part of a workshop at the Ontario Healthy Schools Coalition Annual Forum in Sudbury as and example of a student led project to promote health.

Mise à jour (1 juin 2011)

Students are researching Happiness. The first step was to watch the movie

Born into Brothels, by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, is the winner of the 77th annual Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, Born into Brothels is a portrait of several unforgettable children who live in the red light district of Calcutta, where their mothers work as prostitutes. Zana Briski, a New York-based photographer, gives each of the children a camera and teaches them to look at the world with new eyes.

http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/bornintobrothels/ (there is also an excellent teacher's package to use on this site.)

Students then have created a mindmap to brainstorm ideas about the ideas of happiness and resilience and what we need to be happy and stay happy.