As the front doors of Park Central School swing shut behind me, I check my bag—the camera I brought with me is heavy against my hip. Traffic through Worcester was bad this morning, and my watch says I’m five minutes late. I am nervous, excited, impatient. As I wait for Dr. Galinsky, the principal of PCS, I take in the scene of this K-6 school—its bright but battered hallways, the shuffling and murmuring of kids and teachers settling down to their morning routines, the familiar smells of paper, floor polish, wet shoes.

I am here at Dr. Galinsky's generous invitation. I am part of an interdisciplinary team of faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and we are designing a new core course for graduate students called Thinking Like an Educator. The initiative is based in a belief that “perspectives embodied by particular actors, disciplinary traditions, and levels of analysis contribute to a deep and actionable understanding of complex educational realities” (Boix Mansilla, 2004). I want to be sure that children count among the important actors whose perspectives are considered, and it's that concern that brings me to PCS on this crisp fall day: to understand how kids frame their childhoods. How do they see their school, but also how they see their homes, their identities, their priorities. I mean these questions literally: How do things look from where children stand? What is most important to them? What can educators learn if we take their perspectives into account?

Dr. Galinsky—or “Dr. G.”, as her students call her—shares my interest in these questions, and she likes my idea of giving kids cameras to record, represent, and reflect on their everyday lives. Our hope is that their photos will serve as a window onto the school culture, and at the same time allow me and my colleagues to ask other, more complex questions: How do the children express and establish their identities? What role, if any, do gender, race, immigrant status, and relative economic advantage play in the children's representations? What can we learn from young people's depictions of everyday life at home and in school?