The children’s smiles were brighter than any camera flash.
Jan. 11 was photo pass-out day at STEAM Academy in Akron’s Firestone Park neighborhood.
If it weren’t for art teacher Nicole Bozickovich, some students might not have had the opportunity to have them taken.
Last school year, Bozickovich, 24, noticed many of the students at the charter school opted out of school photos. When she asked why, she found out most could not afford the annual tradition. She asked her alma mater, the Cleveland Institute of Art, if she could borrow some equipment to take their portraits.
The art school agreed and offered to have several of its students take photos as part of their internship, donating the prints for the first year. About 150 STEAM students participated. This year, Bozickovich did it again, offering the free photos to all 175 students, who each received one 8-by-10, two 5-by-7s and four wallets.
“I photographed these students to show the students that they are important enough to be photographed,” Bozickovich said. “Something as simple as a school photograph can be overlooked and taken for granted. To these students it was something that gave them confidence and exactly showed them they are important enough to be photographed. Sometimes when you look at a professional portrait of someone, it is often an important person.”
Bozickovich is starting a nonprofit organization and hopes to expand the free school photo program to other area schools where there is economic need.
Some students have never received school photos before, Bozickovich said.
“I had shown one sixth-grader her photo, and she looked at me and she said, ‘Miss B, I look so beautiful,’ ” she said.
Last week, it was time to pass out the photos for this school year. Kindergarten was up first.
The students sat patiently at their tables, waiting for Miss B, as she is affectionately called, to pass out all the big white envelopes so everyone could open them at the same time.
There was an eruption of cheers and giggling. Little voices exclaimed “Yeah!” and “Look at mine!” Big smiles were captured against a gray cloth backdrop.
“I look like twins!” said My’Linh Eagle, 5, giggling as he held up his portrait sheet of two 5-by-7s. “I look like twin brothers!”
He liked getting his picture taken, he said. “It’s cool.”
Parents liked it, too.
‘Brilliant idea’
Ebony Parker of Akron, who has four students at the school, said she thought the project was a “brilliant idea.”
“They are teaching low-income children so the education is already hard, so the cost of the pictures would be kind of expensive for a lot of these children to be able to afford,” she said.
Parker takes her children to get their photos taken elsewhere but did use the free photos in little scrapbooks they made for themselves around the holidays. “It saved me a lot of money out-of-pocket,” she said.
Simply Color Lab of Akron donated the prints.
“We were excited to get involved due to [Bozickovich’s] enthusiasm,” Merrie Casteel, chief operating officer at the lab, said in an email. “She made it so easy for us to help out, and the project was something we are also passionate about so it wasn’t a difficult decision.”
Photos are rarely printed in the digital age, Casteel said, and when they are, they’re heirlooms.
“We understand that in a difficult economic situation a photograph can be a luxury item when more pressing and immediate needs must be met,” Casteel said. “These photographs are gifts that will become part of their family story for decades or longer. When I think of the precious photographs I have of long-lost relatives or my own childhood memories that I still keep, I can’t imagine someone missing out on that.”
Cassandra Wolf of Cleveland, a junior at Cleveland Institute of Art majoring in photography, was one of the lead photographers on student picture day. This is her second year helping out. She helped set up, organize, pose and direct the children for their individual school portraits.
“Each and every one of them were so happy and excited to come in and have their picture taken,” Wolf said. “We got to talk to the children and get to know them, which helped let their personalities shine through their portraits.”
Third year at school
Bozickovich, who is in her third year at the school, still lives in her native Willoughby Hills and commutes 52 minutes a day.
“I can’t wait to go to work,” she said. She couldn’t wait to come back from winter break. “We’re small enough to know everybody,” she said about the school. “We’re small enough to know what the kids are dealing with at home.”
Bozickovich has a bachelor of fine arts degree in photography from CIA. She took a course in which college students teach art at a school that either can’t afford it or just doesn’t offer it.
“I taught at a charter school that was in downtown Cleveland,” she said. “When I taught at that school — I taught kindergartners first — I walked out and I knew right away that I was meant to teach inner-city kids.”
STEAM Academy is tight on space, so St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, which is right out front, let them use their fellowship hall for taking the photos.
There is no art room. Bozickovich teaches art from a cart, going from room to room four times a week for 30 minutes each period. The K-6 school places an emphasis on the “A” in STEAM, focusing on visual arts as a special for students, all while providing science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to its website.
Bozickovich keeps all her supplies on her cart, which she changes up.
“A lot of the kids are not familiar with certain supplies so I always switch it up and switch it around a little bit so they can experience new things,” she said. Wednesday she was working on colored pencils and shading with the higher grades, and in the lower grades reading books and making art projects based on them.
It’s clear she cares about her students. And the feeling is mutual. One kindergartner almost bowled her over with a big hug as she was crouching down to talk to a table full of students after the photos were passed out.
“What do you think of your photo?” Bozickovich asked a little girl seated at the table. “Do you think you look beautiful?”
The student smiled shyly and nodded.
“I think you look beautiful,” Bozickovich said.
Monica L. Thomas can be reached at 330-996-3827 or mthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @MLThomasABJ and https://www.facebook.com/MLThomasABJ.