Aperture is dedicated to providing educators with the tools and skills necessary to master visual literacy techniques and implement the Aperture On Sight curriculum. Aperture’s education team is available to provide professional development workshops, arts integration consulting across content areas, and direct educational services to your school, camp, museum, or after-school program. All of our Professional Development workshops can take place either in-person, in the classroom, or virtually.

For more information please email Alice Proujansky at edupartners@aperture.org

What Do You See? Teaching Visual Literacy

(12 hours / Four 3-hour sessions)

This class trains teachers in using Aperture’s twenty-session visual literacy and photography curriculum. Novice and experienced arts educators become comfortable leading groups of students through interpreting and creating meaningful images with the coaching of an Aperture On Sight visual literacy trainer—a professional photographer and trained arts educator. 

Participants will decode and encode images, learning how to interpret photographs using flexible, engaging inquiry techniques that make material accessible to middle- and high-school students. The curriculum has been successfully tested with a wide range of students, including English Language Learners, college-bound art students, and sixth graders with no previous experience. 

Using readings from Visual Thinking Strategies, Responsive Classroom, Paulo Freire, and Paul Berger, the class will understand the ways that images communicate, how students can infuse their own photographs with meaning, and ways to move beyond art history lectures toward truly thoughtful interpretative conversations that encourage students to make personal connections with visual imagery. Class participants will do several of Aperture’s hands-on photography and photobook-making lessons, using cameras and visual games to understand the student experience. This four-session class can be held at your school or online.

Embedded Professional Development

(7 hours / One-day Workshop)

An Aperture On Sight visual literacy trainer—a professional photographer and trained arts educator—will visit your school to lead a workshop on implementing Aperture’s twenty-session visual literacy and photography curriculum in your school. The day will consist of working directly with teachers on how to use and adapt the curriculum to fit their classroom needs. The trainer will then work directly with students to teach one of the lesson plans from Aperture On Sight while the classroom teacher observes. This allows the teacher(s) to witness how Aperture On Sight is used in the classroom. 

Educators will practice leading image interpretation conversations with students, overcoming technical concerns, and photobook-making. The trainer will also observe and give feedback on visual literacy teaching. Topics include Collaborative Portraiture, Different Kinds of Truth, Metaphor, Context Case Study, and Mind Mapping. This day-long workshop can be held at your school.

Custom Workshop

None of the above work for you? Not a problem! Aperture is open to building a custom Professional Development plan that fits the needs of your school. We’ve worked with schools to develop custom workshops, which have included classroom visits, virtual meetings with teachers, all day embedded PD workshops, and more.