Marissa rocks

Marissa rocks. She's the coolest sister ever. The newest reason for this is that she has a billboard up in Baltimore!!! (see above) She got the grant for it and the kids she works with helped create it. There's more info at www.buildunitythroughart.com. Also, here's her bio...hope she doesn't mind that I'm bragging about her publicly :-) But, like I said, she rocks.

Marissa Berk-Smith grew up in Columbia, MD. She received her undergraduate degree from Boston College where she studied Sociology and Communications under Dr. Kerry Anne Rockquemore. Her primary focus was finding a way to integrate the sociology of racial identity through photography and qualitative research. The majority of her work has focused on biracial identity. Being biracial, she explored the question “what are you?” Having to reduce her racial and ethnic identity into one box on my college application forms sparked her interest in racial issues and how they affected educational opportunities.

After graduating, she spent a year teaching at-risk, urban elementary school children in Baltimore and Boston. There, she saw that there was a need to expand children’s creativity and imaginations. As a result, Marissa attended Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, to research alternative teaching methods. Literacy Through Photography, a teaching method she learned while at Duke, encourages students to find their voice through photographs and written text. Her first application of Literacy Through Photography methods was teaching Photography II at Massachusetts College of Art to high school students,

Inspired by her work with the youth, she enrolled in the Master’s in Community Arts degree program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She hopes to continue to gain the necessary experience and knowledge to begin working more in depth with community art programs for youth.