Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

I didn’t think at the beginning of this project that it would work at. Our mission is to create a student-led photography team at our school, George Washington Middle School 2. The purpose of this mission is to create a photography team at our school, GWMS, so we can increase popularity and student interest in our school. Our hypothesis is that if we create a successful photography team at our school, then student and parent interest in our school will increase.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

I’ve learned many skills throughout this process, such as how to work together with other people without much trouble. If we run into a problem, we can work through it without trouble. This mission has also really helped me learn to work with people I used to not work with. I also learned how to successfully contact people via Phone. My group and I searched Alexandria Virginia based photography, chose the best people we could find, and filed it. We later called all of the people and asked them for support in the creation of our photography club. The last skill that I learned was how to get rejected. While we were calling photographers for support, we occasionally got a “Yes” out of them. However, lots of the time, we got rejected. I think its a good thing that our team got rejected because it made us know how it felt to get rejected, and it made us “stronger” in a way. I can use these skills outside of the classroom to work on other missions, to try to get support, or to possibly find a good paying job.

Challenges We/I Encountered

We have encountered lots of challenges throughout this process. For example, getting rejected. For awhile, we couldn’t find anybody that would support us in the making of our groups. They didn’t want to help us, or even loan/give us equipment to use. At some points, we couldn’t agree on certain stuff. At some points, we’ve come to a point where we can’t decide on who to try to get in touch with next, or stuff like that. We also struggled when we didn’t know what to do next. Sometimes we come to a point where we’re stuck and out of ideas, and it’s kind of hard to think of what we need to do next.

Solutions We Tried Out

Through all these challenges, we have found solutions. We would each try to work on separate things that would eventually come together to try and get past our disagreements. This worked mostly every time.  If our first solution to the problem didn’t work, then we would just work on separate things until we could come up with an idea, or come up with a real solution to what we should do.

Next Steps

Find and contact a person who can make time to come into our classroom and either give us supplies, or give us knowledge. We would also love to have a mentor, someone who would help us understand photography better, or that could give us ideas on what to do. Another thing that we wouldn’t mind getting from someone is a grant. We would use the grant money to buy/rent good cameras, and other equipment (tripods, better lenses, etc.). We could really use professional help, and getting rejected won’t stop us.

Favorite Part of the Process

My favorite part of this process so far has been calling people. I’ve liked doing this because it’s fun to take risks, and it’s good to get rejected if they say they don’t want to help us. Since I’m doing this at a young age, it will hopefully pay off when I’m holder. Besides from that, it’s fun to call around, and speak to people you don’t know. Hopefully later on, I will get to call other people and be successful.