Margo Wixsom

I teach Photography and Yearbook Production at Palo Alto HS. This is my 7^th year at Paly and my 20^th year teaching a wide range of subjects from ESL adult education and university Composition Writing to Architectural Drawing and Art Spectrum. I have double masters in Art and Literature so I am absolutely passionate about words and images in every form. I love to integrate all types of writing into my class projects and lots of images and Internet fun for visual learning – which is my specialty. This year I’ve had a crash course in the Adobe graphics suite at several RAFT workshops to learn book design and publication for our yearbook. What an exciting group of teachers – great to read all of your stories and interests! I’m looking forward to spending another fellowship with Roni Habib, who inspired me at the Stanford Program fro International Cross-Cultural Education last year. And Eric Bloom and Rob Bolt from my own campus – who knew! I hope to integrate some of what we are doing at the Merit program to enrich the Paly community, as well as network with the impressive group of teachers listed. My project is to design 3 virtual galleries on campus and to learn the technology skills and explore design ideas to include our whole campus in visual literacy. I’m pictured here in Amman, Jordan last summer at Darat Al Funun on Jabal Luweibdeh. This artist outside one of the exhibitions calligraphied my name in Arabic. I spent most of last summer in the Middle East on a Silicon valley Education Foundation fellowship. I stayed with my sister who lives in Amman (but is now working in Afghanistan!) photographing and researching for a book. Istanbul, Damascus, and Petra were the highlights of my travels. I’m focusing my love for writing and photography into the design of several photo-essay books for publication next year, I’m working on collections of photo-essays for three books: “Picturing Middle East” (countering stereotypes through the Arts) “Framing A Life” (the familial and cultural trauma of suicide) “Looking @” (perspectives on viewers in public art spaces) “Notice Nature” (a series of essays and watercolor paintings on everyday beauty). I just found out that I will be going to Scotland this summer for 2 weeks with our school Theater program to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (the largest Arts Festival in the world!). So my summer is going to be an amazing exploration of art & technology - ooking forward to the adventure of learning and creating with all of you.