Teacher’s resource – Page 2

Abandoned Places Have A Beauty All Their Own

It is a curious fact that abandoned houses, towns and other man made objects, when we have finished with them, and left them to rot away on their own, frequently acquire a new sort of beauty, as I hope you will see in the photos I have collected from around the web to illustrate this point.

Generally when we think about stuff that we have thrown away, or abandoned, we tend to think that it will be ugly, messy and generally a bad idea, as in this image below.

And of course, to a large extent this view is correct, rubbish is rubbish, and highly undesirable. But having said that, there remains a sort of haunting beauty in old and abandoned buildings and cities.

A tristesse is always lurking in the background whenever one finds oneself confronted with the ruins of what was once a home, or a village. If you consider the photo below, you will see what I mean.

On one level this is a horrible, rotting mess, but on another level one is forced to think about the people who used to live in this room, what sort of stuff did they watch on that remarkably clean looking TV set, why did they have such large armchairs in their bedroom, set out in order to watch TV in comfort? Who were they, and why did they leave? I am afraid I have no idea, as I do not know anything about this image, other than what it says for itself. Patently a sad story is lurking in the background here, something that caused them to leave quite hurriedly it would seem.

Even in buildings that were never lived in by families, we see the same sort of brooding atmosphere. This image of an abandoned Sanatorium in Germany is such an image.

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A Couple Of Teacher’s Resource Offerings

Occasionally I get overwhelmed by a desire to help teachers – probably owing to the fact that my mother was a teacher, and my wife is a teacher. When this hits me, I simply go with it and see if I can find anything that might be a help.

So today’s offering will take the form of several static images that I feel might spark off a stream of creative writing, a curious and powerful video that might equally give rise to some ideas worth putting on paper, and as the cream on the cake, a piece of music that will assuredly get under your skin and make it unavoidable that your students will be moved into a totally different plane of experience when they hear it… and thus cause them to produce such flights of fantasy that you will be astounded. Or at least that is my fervent hope.

So let us begin with the static images. I have selected three types in the hope that one at least will give your students the start they need to create a story that will take off and be fun to read and consider…..

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Images To Create Stories With

As you may have noted, I have a great affection for odd and old photographs, mainly those depicting people in some way or other. I also find old photos of people fascinating. I look at those old photos and wonder what became of the people in them. Did their lives go well, or not, were they happy, satisfied or miserable in the way their lives went? I suspect that most of us have much the same reaction to looking at photos of people who are long dead.

Curiously I discovered that Alexander McCall Smith, author of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has a similar feeling. He collects old photos of couples he knows nothing about, and creates short stories based on what the photos suggest to him. Not something I have ever gone so far as to do, though the thought always crosses my mind when looking at such photos.

So I though I would post a small collection of such photos that speak to me, in the hope that they might spark off some sort of creative surge in you guys.

So here we go, some random, but in one way or another, intriguing photos of people who are probably long dead.

This next one is really rather odd… but then, who isn’t?

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More Odd Images For Teachers

Here are some more photos I have found that I felt would be useful for language or writing teachers. If you look at the following images, each and everyone of them should spark off ideas in the fantasy of your students be they kids or adults.

I try and find images that I feel are sufficiently strange or thought provoking so that they are guaranteed to make anyone looking at them stop, think and make up a story about how the situation captured in the photos came about.

For instance, look at this one and stop and consider what it is you are looking at. Why is he there, getting something out of the wall, putting something into the wall…? What is the backstory behind his being there in that strange and empty place? What country? When? and so on.

As you can see, an image such as this can lead to endless questions, and thus, if handled correctly, can generate an almost endless stream of ideas.

Or what to think of this one?

What on earth is that guy doing? It seems to me that there are almost endless possibilities in this image. Why has he apparently dug a small hole in an apparently perfectly good road surface? I can imagine that it should be possible to write a short story based on this image, one that probably gives away the reason for the man poking his head into that small hole in the very last sentence of the story?

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Bill Yates – Images Of 1973 Tampa

A few days ago I came across an article in an English newspaper all about an American photographer who had just discovered a box full of negatives of photos he had taken in Tampa Florida in 1973, and never actually looked at in all the following years.

Bill Yates is the photographer and this set of images of a roller skating rink that he visited in 1973 looking for subjects to photograph while he was studying to become a professional photographer powerfully document how life was back in 1973 for a lot of people in the USA, and Europe too.

Apparently he went out one evening looking for subjects to photograph and came across the Sweetheart Skating Rink by pure chance, went in and proceeded to take a series of photos, most of which in themselves and at that time, were not of any special interest, and he only saw them as a technical exercise in taking photos of people. However, looking at them in 2016 they have a very different function – they have become a fascinating window into a sort of world that may still exist, but will look very different in so many ways.

For example, look at these images and tell me what it shows that would be totally impossible in the Western World today……

See what I mean?

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Curious And Odd Images

Once again I have made a small collection of images that I think could be useful as idea generators, pictures that kids could easily use to set their fantasy off in order to write entertaining and quirky stories. And of course, not only kids, all sorts and ages of us could use one or more of these images to be the start point of a story.

This is a photo of what Brisbane used to look like, which is not really important. The reason I chose this image is that it shows a town that was very much a frontier town, farm animals wandering around the street, a mud street you may note… So it seemed to me that there must be dozens of stories lurking in this straight-forward looking photo…

Go for it, and let me know what you (or your students) make of it please.

This is plain weird…. Apparently it is a photo of a gang of KKK idiots on a group outing…. What fun they all seem to be having – or at least if they were honest (and brave enough) to show their faces it might be possible to see how they are all laughing and having a great time on that Ferris Wheel… Anyhow, politics and decency to one side for a minute, this is an epically odd image seems to me, and once again, surely any of you could find a story in it?

Apparently this is a photo of an abandoned Lunatic Asylum, has to be a story there I feel….

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Strange Images For Creative Writing

Continuing my search for images that might be useful to give kids the needed nudge to start to write creatively, here is a collection of extremely odd images of even odder people doing odd things.

To be honest, most of these images seem to me to be completely impossible to find any sort of rational explanation for, but that is precisely why I have chosen them, as in order to explain them one needs to let fantasy rip, and venture out into the uncharted regions of one’s imagination.

You see what I mean? Try and find an explanation for this one that is not totally insane.

OK, even Yetis need to get to work I suppose……..

Don’t even ask what she is doing!!!!

This must be part of some sort of Balkan or Scandinavian folk dance?

Um, yes…………………….

No idea! But I find the creature on the left deeply worrying…. And why on earth would she want to sit on a small alligator I wonder.

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More Curious Photos To Play With

Here are some more images that I thought might be helpful to you teachers to get your student’s minds moving. Show them one or more of these and suggest they use them as a starting point for a story. In fact these images can be used by anyone for a similar purpose.

And for the rest of us, well, they are simply curious, and thought provoking. At least I find them so. All of them were taken in the 19th Century, some as early as 1820, and none later than 1890, so all the people in them are now long dead and buried. This is an aspect of such old photos that never fails to move me. One gazes at the features of these people, and wonders about their lives, their hopes and dreams, and were their lives good ones or sad ones.. did they live to a ripe old age, or did they die the day after the photo was taken?

So many questions are asked by these images – endless material for thinking and creating.

So here you go… A load of images, with no explanations about any of them,as I prefer to leave that up to your imagination.

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Odd And Curious Images

Here are another load of odd and intriguing (and mostly inexplicable) images that might be used to spark off a creative writing class in a school, or simply to give your imagination a challenge – What on earth are they all about????

I shan’t attempt to put any sort of title or comment by these images, but simply bung them here and leave it up to you to make of them what you can…. So let your mind go free and see what you can make using these images.

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Amazing And Intriguing Image

In my continuing search for weird and wonderful images that might help teachers inspire their students to flights of fantasy in their writing, I have just found a truly wonderful one.

There absolutely has to be a story in this image, any red blooded writer would be able to put together at the very least some sort of short story about what on earth was happening in this church out in the middle of nowhere – apparently.

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Please do come back and let us share whatever this image produces…. I am intrigued to know what young and fertile minds might make of it.