I second that emotion

Sometimes, special needs children have difficulties identifying emotions. That is, they may have a hard time seeing the look on your face and associating it with anger, embarrassment, happiness, sadness, etc.
Last week, I was working with some of my student’s on doing just that. First, I had them sort and categorize several pictures of people making faces that conveyed a range of emotions. After that, we got to the fun part. I allowed them to use my camera to take pictures of each other making facial expressions to convey emotions. They had to tell the person they were taking a photo of to express a particular emotion and that person would give it a shot.

Now, not unlike some of you, using an unfamiliar camera can be a little difficult for these kiddos. It takes some getting used to how long one must hold the button down before the picture takes. Therefore, sometimes the photographer’s subject had to hold their expression for a longer than natural time.

Enter my photo shoot:
Can you tell which emotion I am trying to convey?


Yeah, I am going for “fear.” As you can see, I totally sucked. I think I was holding that position for a solid 60 seconds.

I got better at it when I was asked to be “mad” for the picture:


I don’t really show it with they eyes. Tyra would be disappointed. I wish I could post the pictures of the students making the expressions. They are priceless!

It really was a fun “lesson.”

My job is cool.