Photojournal: Our Lives in Pictures

Students during the first two weeks in the iWriteADream program focused on writing their stories. Over the next two weeks, their task was to capture, using disposable cameras, the story of their lives in pictures. A selection of those photos from more than a dozen student photo-journalists appear here in three multimedia presentations.

     -Photos by iWriteADream (Pembroke) staff

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Photos by iWriteADream (Pembroke) Staff

 

Family and Friends...

Photos by Darrin Lee Thomas

 

Remember My Face

Photos by Damarckus Lee Thomas and iWriteADream (Pembroke) staff

"Our Time, Our Stories, Our Voices" iWriteADream

No lions, tigers or bears; But plenty of animals roam

Story by Quinton Moore                       

Photo by Jackie Collins

Hopkins Park is filled with the sights and sounds of wildlife that dance across roads and green fields, with the songs of birds that chirp in the morning air. 

Some animals even creep up to your door or play in your yard in the early-morning summer air. The majority of wildlife in Hopkins Park is mostly deer, squirrels and rabbits. There are even wild dogs, snakes and possums.

Hopkins Park doesn’t really have dangerous wild animals. And, in fact, the animals that most people consider dangerous aren’t really dangerous. Often, when animals attack, it is because most are just protecting themselves or protecting their young.

Also, some animals, especially wild dogs, might have previously been house pets with some training. Other animals who end up in the wild here might at one time have been pets, but in some cases were abused or mistreated by their owners. Now they are just trying to survive in the wild, which also means finding an area to rest without intruding on another animal’s territory.

And this isn’t the most exciting thing to hear, but you also are likely to see dead possums, snakes, and sometimes deer lying in the road or just on the side due to an accident, most of the time because of drivers not paying attention.
Wildlife here in Hopkins Park can be very interesting. Birds chirp in the morning. Squirrels dig for their breakfast.

You might even see a deer run across the road while sitting in your car. Or you might see a wild mother dog nurturing her puppies. Or every now and then, you can catch a woodpecker hammering a tree in search for insects, or humming birds sipping nectar from flowers, or rabbits hopping through the woods or across someone’s front yard. Or you just might see a cowboy on a horse, galloping down the road, underneath a blue sky.

Pembroke Live Podcast: On one student's love for writing

Reporter Precious Lamb interviews colleague Dontez Moore on his love for writing. (Click below to hear the interview.)

Settling in for summer in a land beyond the deadly city

By Devonte Dixon

The first day here at Lorenzo R. Smith school was kind of exciting, but also kind of boring. Then I met some real nice people, though I thought some of them were kind of uptight.

We did a lot of things like switch classes and eat lunch. We even went to the school’s library. That’s when I met more new faces, some of them familiar. We had to do reports on anything we wanted. I chose to write about the summer here in this small town about an hour’s drive south of Chicago.

Summer here is way different from Chicago because there are a lot of things you could do in the big city that you couldn’t do here, like pop firecrackers. Out here, that popping sound of firecrackers might actually be gunshots. But out here, guns are used mostly for killing animals, not people.

In Chicago, people use guns to kill people.

(Editor's note: In Chicago this year, 27 Chicago Public School students reportedly have been murdered, mostly by gun violence—a continuing story with rippling effects for some students here. Posters like that shown in the photo are the work of an anti-violence campaign and have been posted in neighborhoods across Chicago.)

Dribbling all the way to State; A Winning Season

Reporter Tommie Thomas interviews players and Coach Peter Perkins on the Lorenzo R. Smith boys basktball team's journey to the state tournament this spring. (Photos and Story by Tommie Thomas; For slide show, click below)

It's a Rap: Life in Pembroke

Kwame Robinson raps about life in his hometown. "Best believe that I will represent Hopkins," he says during an impromptu performance. (To hear Kwame, click below.)

Where I'm coming from; Can you hear me?

By Keyuana Coiley

This is Pembroke where I’m from.
You can SEE this town,
But can you tell me what’s behind closed doors?

You say that money goes to waste
On some shoelaces
When your child is trying
To keep his or her clothes clean,
Knowing you have no washing machine.

You all were so happy to see Oprah,
Most of y’all showed her how you live.
And did you get help?
No!

All she did was show how poor you were on her television show.
Did she even go and knock on a pretty house’s door?
No!

Don’t get me wrong, I love my town
Just tell me why sometimes it makes me want to cry?

But I am thankful that the sky is blue
And the grass is green
And hip is clean.

Know what I mean?

Think about it: Reflections on teen pregnancy

Poetic essay by Cha’Kevia Lewis and Precious Lamb

Everyone gettin’ pregnant, like it’s all a joke
15, 16, thinkin’ they all grown up
Yea, I’m talking to you,
‘Cause your man think he slick, telling you he loves you
And that life ain’t spit.

So then you fell in.
Not understanding the consequences of your actions.

And then,
You got pregnant.

So you gotta go through the stress of telling your mom
And you gotta hear her mouth
And now, having to make the decision of living with it,
Or killing it.

And people can’t keep secrets.
So word is going out that you sexually active,
No job,
Pregnant.
Section 8 to survive.

I'm a beast

By Quinton Moore

I’m a beast!  I’m a beast!
That’s what I always say.

I’m a beast! I’m a beast!
I say it every day.

I know it sounds kind of cocky.
But out on the field

No one can stop me.

Out here, I can be myself.
And on the field,

I can do things like no one else.

I’m a beast.

(Photo shows a smiling Quinton Moore, who plays for the Momence Redskins Football team in Kankakee County)