Exploring a Theme To Be of Use: The Physicality of Work
A Lesson Sequence for Grades 6 – 12 Connecting Art & the CCSS
Reading
Opinion Writing Narrative Writing Listening & Speaking Figurative Language
Poetry
1 About the Artwork in the Exhibition
The scenes of Latin American culture, politics, environments, and
individuals are explored in depth in Looking In, Looking Out: Latin
American Photography. This exhibition, drawn from the
permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art,
highlights works by Latin American photographers, or artists who
have adopted it as home, so that those from outside the region
may look into the lives of Latin America. Through the lens of
nostalgia, propaganda, a populist aesthetic, and changing
perspectives, photographers illustrate the diverse but often similar
spirits of countries in the region.1
to Students
Connecting
The photographs in this exhibition invite students to look closely
and think deeply; to enter the world portrayed in the images,
and to consider themes and ideas that connect to their own lives
and experiences. A Painter of Poems
Flor Garduño, Mexican, b. 1957, Basket of Light, Canasta de
luz, Sumpango, Guatemala, 1989, gelatin silver print, SBMA Connecting the the CCSS The photographs in this lesson sequence provide engaging entry points for collaborative classroom
discourse (ELA Listening & Speaking Standards). Open-ended VTS* discussions about the images, whether
viewed singly or in pairs, prompt students to ask questions and to form and support opinions. Sharing their
responses and stating supporting rationale for their speculations and observations provide a forum in
which students can offer and consider multiple perspectives. Shared discussions lead to individual
connections to these works of art—connections that can be shaped into fictional and personal narratives
and/or poetry.
*Visual Thinking Strategies, see http://www.vtshome.org
1 cite
SBMA website
2 Exploring a Theme through Writing To Be of Use: The Physicality of Work
In the following series of photographs, the subjects are involved
in physical work. Their bodies are required to do the labor that
provides support for themselves, their families, and their
countries and causes. Often the work they do defines who they
are. Throughout history, the physicality of work provides clues to a
culture—from how people in a particular place use natural
resources, to what they honor and believe, and to the economic
hierarchy of labor that exists in the community. Each of these photographs poses questions to the viewer about
the nature of work: what skills are involved, what part does an
individual play in providing a service, what is physically required
of a worker, and what is required for success at this task? Who
profits from the work these hands provide? What personal
qualities (character traits) are shaped by the physical aspects of
the work? What skills? When does the work of one’s hands
become art?
From the gnarled hands of a field laborer to the grace of a
flower vendor and the dancelike skill of a fisherman with his net,
each of these images tells a story of place, time, and culture. After viewing this series of slides, students will be asked to talk
and write about their responses, and to connect to their
personal experiences with the physicality of work. 3 As students view each slide in this series, ask
them to consider all (or some) of the following
questions:
1.  What is going on in this image? (VTS
discussion)
2.  What physical effort is involved in the
implied or obvious work portrayed?
3.  Beyond the moment captured in each
photograph, what is the (inferred or
demonstrated) process of work for each
subject? Preparation, sequential steps – how
would this work feel in the body? What is
challenging? What is satisfying? What is
accomplished? Who benefits from this work?
Are others involved in the work? How is this
individual’s work compensated?
4.  Consider the five senses: what does each
worker see, touch, smell, hear, or taste? Note: The following slides contain the IMAGE BANK for the VTS
discussions and subsequent Thinking Routines. Initial viewing of the
images without titles will contribute to keeping discussions and ideas
open-ended. See the Image Bank at the end of this lesson sequence that
includes full-size images with and without citations. Rodrigo Moya, Mexican, b. 1934
Life Isn’t Beautiful, Ixtlera region of northern Mexico La vida no es bella, Región ixtlera del norte de
México, 1965 (printed 2010)
Gelatin silver print, SBMA
4 5 Raúl Corrales, Cuban, 1925-2006, Fishing Net, La atarraya, ca. 1950
gelatin silver print, SBMA
6 7 Sebastião Salgado, Brazilian, b. 1944, Mexico, México, 1980
gelatin silver print, SBMA
8 9 Rodrigo Moya, Mexican, b. 1934
Life Isn’t Beautiful, Ixtlera region of northern Mexico La vida no es bella, Región ixtlera del norte de
México, 1965 (printed 2010)
Gelatin silver print, SBMA
10 A Painter of Poems
11 A Painter of Poems
Flor Garduño, Mexican, b. 1957
Basket of Light, Canasta de luz, Sumpango, Guatemala, 1989
gelatin silver print, SBMA 12 13 Raúl Corrales, Cuban, 1925-2006
White Hats, Havana, Sombreritos, La Habana, 1960
gelatin silver print, ed. 1/40, SBMA
14 Rodrigo Moya Mexican, b. 1934
Guerrillas in the Mist Guerrilleros en la niebla, Sierra Falcón, Venezuela, 1965
(printed 2010)
gelatin silver print, SBMA
Alberto Korda, Cuban, 1928-2001
Don Quixote of the Lamppost El Quijote de la farola, 1959 (printed 1998)
gelatin silver print, SBMA
In his poem “How Things Work” Gary Soto writes:
…The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
Click this link to read the entire poem.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/how-things-work/
After viewing the images in this presentation, think about how the work of each subject’s
hands provides money that “filters down” (as Soto writes). Then click on the next three
slides and incorporate your responses into a narrative account or poem that explores
how things (and people) work. Writing in response to a selected photograph:
Imagine that you are the subject in one of the photographs. Write about your experience
of work – the physical aspects of what you do. What are your motivations? Preparations?
Challenges? Successes? With whom do you interact – do you work alone or with others?
What are you paid? Where does the money go? What does payment for your labor
provide? Write from the point of view of the subject. Connecting to personal experience:
When have you engaged in physical labor? What were you doing – why? What was
involved? Consider the same questions (listed above) that you included in the first written
response, only this time, you will create word pictures for the reader. Use concrete words and descriptions, specific verbs, sensory descriptions, and figurative
language (similes and metaphors) in your descriptions.
In your first draft, write descriptively. Then include phrases and sentences from your
descriptive writing in a narrative account of your work experience. Optional: Write a poem about your work experience. Include the steps or process involved
in the work, but also include the beauty and/or significance or the work. See the next slide
for inspiration.
Using Figurative Language
Use these two Thinking
Routines (below) to find
metaphors in the exhibition
photographs. Compare the
subjects, their attitudes,
physical features, or their
movements to something
else as you describe your
response to a selected
image. 21 Read the poem “Putting in a Window” by John Brantingham. Click on the following link for the complete poem:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2005/11/15
Here is an excerpt:
Putting in a Window
Carpentry has a rhythm that should never
be violated. You need to move slowly,
methodically, never trying to finish early,
never even hoping that you'd be done sooner.
It's best if you work without thought of the
end. If hurried, you end up with crooked door joints and drafty rooms. Do not work
after you are annoyed just so the job
will be done more quickly. Stop when you begin to curse at the wood. Read the poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney. It describes the work of father and son – one works with great physical
effort, and the other works with his mind, soul, and hand. Below is an excerpt - click on the following link for the
complete poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177017
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.
(next slide please)
The poet Marge Piercy wrote a poem titled “To Be
of Use.” In it she writes:
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Read the entire poem by clicking on this link:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/249346
Your Turn:
Under the influence of her words, write a poem or
personal narrative that reveals a personal work
experience that offered you an opportunity to be
of use. Perhaps you worked alone, or perhaps you
were one of many who worked for a common
cause.
Explain the significance of the experience – what it
meant to you. Alberto Korda, Cuban, 1928-2001
Don Quixote of the Lamppost El Quijote de la farola, 1959 (printed 1998)
gelatin silver print, SBMA
In the short story “Hands” by Sherwood Anderson, a reporter (George
Willard) writes about the hands of Wing Biddlebaum, a field picker in the
town of Winesburg, Ohio. Below is an excerpt from the short story:
The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity,
like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his
name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands
alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked
with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked
beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.
When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and
beat with them upon a table or on the walls of his house. The action made
him more comfortable. If the desire to talk came to him when the two were
walking in the fields, he sought out a stump or the top board of a fence
and with his hands pounding busily talked with renewed ease.
Rodrigo Moya, Mexican, b. 1934
Life Isn’t Beautiful, Ixtlera region of northern Mexico La vida no es bella, Región ixtlera del norte de México,
1965 (printed 2010), Gelatin silver print, SBMA
The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in itself.
Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in
obscure men. It is a job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had attracted
attention merely because of their activity. With them Wing Biddlebaum
had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day.
They became his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also they
made more grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality.
Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum in the same spirit
in which it was proud of Banker White's new stone house and Wesley
Moyer's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot at the fall
races in Cleveland.
Read the entire piece online at http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/
Hand.shtml
What other stories and books include
details about a character’s hands? Look for
the descriptions of hands in the stories,
novels, and biographies you read. Choose one of the photographs in the
exhibition and write about the subject’s
hands – create a context, “flesh out” the
character, and perhaps add internal and
spoken dialogue to the piece. What figurative language (refer to slide 13)
could you add to your piece to help
readers imagine the hands, the subject,
and the work he/she engages in? Connections to the Standards:
Reading (Grades 6 – 12)
• Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when
writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
• Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
• Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
• Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and
analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
• Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the relate to each other and the
whole.
• Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
• Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually, as well as in words.
• Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the
authors take.
Writing (Grades 6-12)
• Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient
evidence. • Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and wellstructured event sequences.
• Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event
sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.
• Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
• Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to
another.
• Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to convey experiences and events.
• Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.
• Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and
audience. • Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate
the information while avoiding plagiarism. • Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. • Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a
day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences. Listening & Speaking
Comprehension and Collaboration (Grades 6 – 12)
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 6 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation by
referring to evidence on the topic, text, or issue to probe and reflect on ideas under discussion.
Follow rules for collegial discussions, set specific goals and deadlines, and define individual roles as needed.
Pose and respond to specific questions with elaboration and detail by making comments that contribute to the
topic, text, or issue under discussion.
Review the key ideas expressed and demonstrate understanding of multiple perspectives through reflection and
paraphrasing.
Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or
issue under study.
Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and
evidence from claims that are not.
Present claims and findings, sequencing ideas logically and using pertinent descriptions, facts, and details to
accentuate main ideas or themes; use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.
Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, images, music, sound) and visual displays in presentations to
clarify information.
This lesson was created by Joni Chancer, SBMA Curriculum Consultant. Credits and permissions:
This presentation was created by SBMA for instructional use only and is not to be altered in
any way, or reproduced without attribution.
For further information about these or other Education and Outreach Programs, contact
Rachel Krieps at [email protected]
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