The year 2006 saw the implementation of a new curriculum for teaching English First Additional Language (FAL) in grades 10-12 in South African high schools. The curriculum includes the teaching and assessment of visual literacy — a challenge for teachers whose apartheid-era teacher education did not address visual literacy at all. The article is a self-critical reflection on my attempts to teach and assess a unit on visual literacy in a Grade 10 class in a rural high school in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.