Every photograph tells a story: of struggle, of beauty, of community and culture. Social studies teacher Kim Kanof uses photos from the Protests and Politics collection to teach about protests around in the world in 1968. National Geographic photo editor Pamela Chen details the collaborative process of creating photo-based feature stories with design director David Whitmore. Iowa photographer Danny Wilcox Frazier discusses his work documenting the residents and images of marginalized communities across the United States. About the series: A multidisciplinary professional development course for middle and high school teachers in English language arts, social studies, mathematics and science; 5 video programs; 11 curated photo collections with background text, classroom activities, and additional resources. A multidisciplinary resource for middle and high school teachers, Essential Lens: Analyzing Photographs Across the Curriculum seeks to inspire teachers to use photographs and photographic ephemera with their teaching, and provides practical methods to facilitate the use of these materials in classroom settings across disciplines. Essential Lens introduces teachers to the richness of photographs as curricular tools. The course resources include five videos that introduce the ways photographic images impact our lives and what we know about the world and its history. On the course website, 11 curated photo collections with more than 250 rights-cleared photographs for classroom use include background information and detailed thematic classroom activity plans. Essential Lens provides everything a teacher needs to begin using photographs to engage students in deeper understanding and learning of a range of subjects from history to biology. Produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting. © 2015.