A Different Lens: Reclaiming Our Stories with Counter Narrative Photojournalism

This lesson was created by Charles Sanderson, an educator in Woodburn, Oregon as part of the spring 2025 Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship program. It is designed for facilitation across approximately three 90 minute class periods.

For more lessons created by Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellows in this cohort, click here.

I was deeply moved by the photography of Anthony Vazquez, a Chicago-based journalist, because he tells a very different story about migrants–especially Venezuelan migrants than most of what I’ve seen. Instead of focusing on the trauma, Anthony humanizes the migrants he meets, helping us see moments of joy, connection, and hope.

Lesson Overview

Students will analyze the work of photojournalist Anthony Vazquez, focusing on his ability to empathize with and humanize the stories of migrants and immigrants. Students will juxtapose Vazquez’s work with that of local journalists covering stories about our community. Finally, students will take action by telling counternarratives about our community through photojournalism.

Essential Questions

• How can photojournalism be used as a tool to humanize those who are often dehumanized?
• How can photojournalism tell a more complete story of people impacted by migration?
• How can we use photojournalism to push back against false or incomplete narratives of our community?

Performance Task

"Now, you become the photojournalist."

1. Take lots of photographs that strive to be counternarratives to the stories that are often told about our community. 
2. Choose three of your favorites.
   1. Give each a tagline.
   2. Write at least a paragraph highlighting your purpose in including this photograph.
   3. Give your collective body of work a title that matters.
   4. Combine the title, photographs, tag lines, and writing in one document.

Your goal is to use photojournalism to humanize people in our community and tell a counternarrative to push back against the way our community has been reported on historically.

Assessment

Self Evaluation

• What do you love most about your photojournalism?
  • Ex. What I love most about my photojournalism is the way it allowed me to highlight the specific beauty, strength, and individuality in people I admire. Not only did I enjoy doing it as a way to express my appreciation for them, but there was also an intentional purpose to challenge assumptions and generalizations that are very present in this community, and show that what might seem ordinary from the outside is often layered, powerful, and deeply moving when you take the time to look closer.

• If you had more time or access to other locations or people, what else would you want to highlight?
  • Ex. I think I really love finding the beauty in things that seem ordinary, so I would like to go to small communities around different countries or even large cities in the US, and find stories there. I find the quiet ways in which people carry strength very cool and fun, uncovering those layers is not only important to honor people that may not realize the significance they have in their communities and the beauty in their stories, but I also just genuinely enjoy doing it, and I’d love to encourage others to do it too. 

• Who do you most want to know about the counter narrative you are telling?
  • Ex. Although I want people outside of Woodburn to see it, I would love people within Woodburn to see this counter narrative the most. Small towns with large immigrant populations get reduced to stereotypes and a lot of times people internalize this. I’d want  people from more privileged communities to understand that there is so much brilliance and beauty here. But what I want the most is people in our community to see that their stories matter and what they are already living is something extraordinary and worth talking about. 

• What would you hope they learned about our community?
  • I hope they learn that our community is full of depth. That we are artists, thinkers, dancers, advocates, and visionaries and that although there is struggle, we are much more than that.

Peer Feedback

• What is the story that your peer is trying to tell?
• What emotions do their photos evoke?
• What do you learn or discover about our community that you wish others knew?

Notes on Context & Content Advisory

88% of my students are Latinx. We are a rural community and the agricultural hub of the Willamette Valley. Local news coverage of our community often highlights fear and negativity.

Three-day lesson plan, including texts, discussion questions, a student work packet, and performance task for the lesson. Download below to read the complete lesson plan.

Lesson Resources

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.6

Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.7

Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.

Learning for Justice Standards:

Anchor standard: Students will respond to diversity by building empathy, respect, understanding and connection.

Anchor standard: Students will examine diversity in social, cultural, political, and historical contexts rather than in ways that are superficial or oversimplified.

DI.9-12.7

I have the language and knowledge to accurately and respectfully describe how people (including myself ) are both similar to and different from each other and others in their identity groups.

DI.9-12.8

I respectfully express curiosity about the history and lived experiences of others and exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way.

AC.9-12.16

I express empathy when people are excluded or mistreated because of their identities and concern when I personally experience bias.

In this lesson, after studying the work of Pulitzer Center journalists, students became photojournalists themselves and turned their cameras towards their own community to highlight underreported narratives with a positive lens. Here is a sampling of their work:

Teacher Reflection

Charles Sandersom is a Creative Writing and Vocal Justice teacher at Woodburn High School in Woodburn, OR. Sanderson created the lesson plan, A Different Lens: Reclaiming Our Stories with Counter Narrative Photojournalism, as a part of the spring 2025 Teacher Fellowship for alumni, “Global Issues, Local Contexts: News for Civic Knowledge and Engagement.” His lesson reached 125 students. At the conclusion of the fellowship, Sanderson shared the following reflections on his experience developing and teaching the lesson.

What is the focus of your lesson plan, and why did you write this lesson for your community?

I was deeply moved by the photography of Chicago-based journalist Anthony Vazquez because he tells a very different story about migrants, especially Venezuelan migrants, than most of what I’ve seen. Instead of focusing on the trauma, Anthony humanizes the migrants he meets, helping us see moments of joy, connection, and hope.

At the start of the unit, I looked at the coverage of our community, and I was shocked. Every single story was negative except one that was rather benign. I reached out to a journalist I knew at the outlet to encourage them to share some of the success stories of my amazing students, and I have yet to receive a response. I then reached out to another journalist and shared an annotated list with links of stories they could cover. This time I got a response, but I felt like I was gaslit. I followed up again, and this time the reporter made some changes to their site and let me know, “I’m planning to talk with my editor early next week about general reflections on our coverage of Woodburn moving forward.”

Our unit had two basic components. First, we explored Anthony Vazquez’s work, thinking about the emotions he evokes and what we believe he is trying to communicate about the lives of people who are forced to migrate. Then we grabbed our cameras(phones) and became photojournalists enlisted with telling counternarratives about our community that would foster empathy.

How did you build this lesson with your community in mind?

88% of my students can trace their ancestry to what is now Mexico, Central America, or South America. At the same time, a majority are born in the United States. Despite massive opportunity gaps and many students needing to work from a young age, my students routinely win regional and national writing competitions, get published widely, and perform in front of audiences of thousands. Valeria Ruiz Tapia has been published by the American Academy of Poets. Award-winning poet Danez Smith described Mariana Bartolo Colon’s poem with the following: “The poet’s searching prayer, which at first turns towards faith before taking us to such a rebellious and firm-footed finale, moved me to tears. “espíritu santo, / amor del padre y del hijo, / ¿qué es del amor para las madres e hijas?” That question is one yet to be answered, but this poem puts God and world to task. This poem is a battle cry for the women and girls of the world.”

Nevertheless, these accolades go unreported by local media. Instead, the stories covered by local and state outlets cover are about trauma:deaths of students, numerous teacher resignations, and fear and confusion in our community because of the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants. In addition, they publish out and out falsehoods such as “The city is made up largely of immigrant Mexican or Latino residents.” For one, this is simply not true. 31% of our residents were born outside the United States. However, they are also implying that to be Mexican means you are not American.

This coverage of our community causes internalized oppression. Thus,  by the time my students arrive in my class, they often lack academic, intellectual, and even linguistic self esteem despite being multilingual.

Belen, a freshman at Yale, didn’t think she was a writer, but it was her writing that got her into any Ivy League school. Valeria–mentioned above–similarly didn’t see herself as a writer when she first arrived in my classroom.

This unit was an attempt to push back against the narratives that others want to tell about our community and tell our stories with a different lens.

What did your students learn while engaging with this lesson?

The following quotes capture strong examples from students’ final projects about what they learned in the lesson:

“In a place like Woodburn it can be easy to assume that everyone shares the same story:  immigrant roots, similar cultures, families and similar struggles. But when you look closer, you realize that within our community and shared experiences, each person carries something uniquely their own,” Valeria Ruiz Tapia, Emory University class of 2029 and Woodburn High school alumnus, wrote in the slideshow for her final project in this unit.

She added, “There’s authenticity and power all around: In the way people are kind to each other, in the way they celebrate their roots, hold on to their traditions, in the art they create, the hospitality they show, the resilience they carry without mentioning it or maybe even without realizing it. So many stories that may seem ordinary at first but are actually full of extraordinary people.  This slideshow made me reflect and reminded me that even if sometimes our backgrounds overlap, our voices, dreams, and journeys are all deeply personal. If we listen closely and try to see others fully, we begin to understand the richness and beauty that lives in each person’s story. And there are many in Woodburn.” 

“When you look at me, a white kid in a Hispanic town, you would probably think I’m an outsider, but I’ve been changed by the culture, and I’m so grateful for it,” student Isaac Lesh wrote.

“I personally think it’s hard for people’s voices to be heard in such a small town, especially Woodburn, so knowing that her voice was heard even outside of Woodburn can be inspirational,” student Sheccid Castillo wrote in her final project about Belen Mendoza Cortes, a Woodburn High School graduate and freshman at Yale University, performing at the Portland Book Festival and in front of two thousand people at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. “It’s never too late to dance into your identity.”

What did you learn by creating and teaching this lesson?

I was incredibly invested in the heart of this unit–the use of photojournalism to humanize those who are often marginalized. The challenges facing migrants across the globe and those who are trying to make it to the United States are in my head and heart everyday.  As a result, the work of Anthony Vazquez instantly hit me in my heart of hearts. However, when I shared his work with my students, I didn’t get the same sort of reaction. In fact, some students presented as being uninterested. When I tried to tease out why, I got very little in response. 

On the other hand, I had many students dive deep into both Anthony’s work as well as taking great care with their own projects. Isaac Lesh wrote about being white yet participating in traditional Mexican dance. Vicky Schastlyvyy highlighted what makes her little sister so special, reminding us, “It illustrates the importance of taking small steps to remain determined and happy–and how we should always strive to look higher for a better future.” Sheccid Castillo tells us that, “it’s never too late for anything and always remember to embrace who you are.”

Valeria Ruiz Tapia, a senior who will attend Emory University on a full ride next year, powerfully highlights the unique and inspiring stories of two of her friends; however, she also wrote about me, and that’s when the tears started to flow,  especially when I read, “He is constantly encouraging students to reflect on themselves, understand others, and build real empathy and that belief he holds and shows in authenticity has changed lives, including mine. Mr. Sanderson doesn't just teach writing; he teaches people how to take up space, use their voice, and write their truth with courage.” I do every assignment my students do, and this was no different, and Valeria was the subject of one of my stories.

Another positive outcome of this unit was when I pushed back against Oregon Public Broadcasting’s coverage of our community. It took several emails. However, through my advocacy, I received the following message: “I talked with our digital producers today about updating the Woodburn tag page. I found at least six stories from recent years that should have been on that page, so thanks for bringing it to our attention! They're adding those now. And I'm planning to talk with my editor early next week about general reflections on our coverage of Woodburn moving forward.”

I plan on a couple significant changes to this unit when I teach it next year. First, I am going to find out whose voices my students don’t hear often enough in the news and what communities of people they see being portrayed primarily in a negative light. Then I will build out an annotated library that includes a wide-range of photojournalism that helps humanize populations who are often marginalized. I hope this will help more students find communities they are interested in learning more about while providing other students options if they don’t want to engage in content that is too close to home.

About Charles Sanderson

Charles Sanderson has taught for twenty-one years and found home teaching in Woodburn, Oregon. He is the 2020 Oregon Teacher of the Year for the Willamette Region and a member of the inaugural class of Vocal Justice Teaching Fellows.