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An ink pad may not be an obvious artist's tool. But seventh-grade students at I.S. 190 in Crotona Park, Bronx used ink pads to create self-portraits with their inky pointer fingers and pinkies.

Annette Swierzbinski get with the students to express themselves through art.

"I think as the kids get to record who they are in pictures, I think they can begin to better express themselves in words and spoken," she says.

Swierzbinski started Others Are Us, a free cultural art exchange for schools around the city.

"Others Are Us is a nonprofit that I started after 9/11, because I felt that people were going to be afraid of other people and there was going to be a lot of suspicion and seeing enemies every place," says Swierzbinski.

The art the children create in the class will be sent to kids in other countries in a so-called "picture pal" exchange. Last year, the children exchanged artwork with children in Nicaragua.

"A way of approaching other people and finding out from them about who they are as opposed to coming up with a conclusion or a judgment," says Swierzbinski.

The students at I.S. 190 learned how the Nicaraguan children lived.

"I was really happy to see how other people draw and for other people to see how I am," says seventh-grader Lovasia Banks.

"Ms. Annette," as she is known to her students, started working with them last year.

"It was the first time they were using a watercolor or drawing, or being asked to express themselves. I was really surprised," says Swierzbinski.

For Lovasia, her art and Ms. Annette's support gave her a confidence and emotions she had never known before.

"The way she makes me feel, she tells me that I can really do it. I really do believe it and I feel confident about myself," says Lovasia.

This year, Ms. Annette plans to set up picture pal programs with kids in the Dominican Republic, Bulgaria, Poland and Nepal. Her students will have a chance to display their art in a gallery, as they did last year.

"Ms. Annette's program has touched so many of my children, and she will be a role model for them for many years to come," says I.S. 190 Principal DianaJade Santiago.

So, for teaching kids that "Others" are just like us, Annette Swierzbinski is the latest New Yorker of the Week.

For more information on the program, visit www.OthersAreUs.org or call 1-917-445-4649.