Photography teacher Meghan O’Donnell is trying something new with her students this year. In early March, she had a unique idea to exchange artwork with schools across the globe.

“We are taking photos of St. Louis, Wildwood and Lafayette and making them into baseball sized cards. We’ve planned to exchange with schools from Lithuania, Pakistan, Canada and the U.K. In return, they’re sending us drawings and paintings of the same size,” said O’Donnell.

The teacher says the process of contacting international teachers happened fairly quickly and she is planning to send artwork at the end of the week.

“I saw an idea of it on an art teaching website, and thought it would be a good idea to do that with my Photography 1 and 2 students as well as the kids in my Photography club. I then got in contact with a group of international art teachers on Facebook, sent them an obscene amount of emails and many teachers agreed right away,” said O’Donnell.

O’Donnell plans to cover the shipping fees with the money she gets from the school or cover the costs with her own money.

“This is the first time I’m doing an exchange, I plan on sending out the photos at the end of this week, as the international students are sending their projects this week as well. Hopefully, we will receive each others work in the next few weeks,” said O’Donnell.

When O’Donnell completes the exchange, she plans to distribute some to the students and display the others around school to get the word out.

“I’m hoping to expand this to the entire art and foreign language department. It would be great if we got schools from Spanish or french speaking countries next year so the foreign language students could write something on the back of each card.”

By integrating the exchange project into her curriculum, O’Donnell hopes to continue the exchange with various countries.

“Due to the different school schedule times, I’m planning to exchange early next semester with those schools who plan on working on their pieces over the summer to continue the project and use it as a refresher for Photography 2 students for the next semester,” O’Donnell said.