Yesterday during writing, my cooperating teacher turned off all the lights and asked students to put their heads on their desk. The third-grade class quietened down.
The teacher played a calming piece of music that put me into a zen-like state of mind. It was very calming.
After two or three minutes of listening, the teacher turned off the music and asked students to capture the thoughts and images that ran through their head while listening to the music. With oil pastels, students were to express these thoughts on the black paper that was laid out in front of them.
The drawings that some of them drew completely blew my mind.
It's like, you spend so much time trying to teach currency, change in time, or why hot-air balloons float in the air, that you don't realize - or might even doubt - the depth of thinking students actually have.
Walking around, one girl drew a beautiful waterfall, blending colors and drawing proportions and perspectives "beyond" her 8 years of life experience. Across from her, a Middle-Eastern girl drew a woman's head with deep, black eyes and a stream of tears trickling down her face. Why did she emphasize the eyes so much? Why did all expression come from this one part of the face? What significance do eyes - or the eyes of women - have in her culture?
In the written reflection of her drawing, she wrote (in third-grade, disproportionately skewed handwriting), "
I sat there alone... on the burning dessert floor. Everything is still. I have just lost Everything. I have been kidnapped. I feel as though I have been betrayed, killed, and thrown. The kidnappers have just thrown me down from a helicopter into the Saharah dessert. I know i will live, but death will soon come. But when it does come I will be prepared for it.
2 weeks later...
I felt like it was the end for me, I am dying of thirst, but now it is the end for me and my precious life. I am gone... forever.
Someday somebody will find my body and I will be watching."
Aren't third-graders supposed to be thinking of rainbows and ponies?
Making my way to the other side of the room, I passed a boy who was having trouble writing down his thoughts. His picture was a blue, red and yellow explosion of colors, blasting out from the center of the page. He could not verbalize his thoughts.
Well, what did you draw?
I don't know. I just saw an explosion.
Well that can be your first sentence! Then what happens?
I don't know.
Can you explain what's happening in your drawing to me?
Well, we're looking at the explosion?
Who's "we"?
The people on the side of the mountain with me.
Well, there's your second sentence!
It makes you realize how strong the disconnect is between expression and the "inner trappings" of our thoughts. Locked away and, only with the right tools or medium, revealed to our own selves.
Making it to the other end of the room, one girl had drawn a crucifix with five nails.
Jesus? No, this 9-year old girl, who is crippled with scoliosis and walks around with crutches, wrote in her reflection.
"
I'm nailed on the head to toe.
I feel like I'm spining around and around.
I think two men are spining me.
I'm in the woods hearing the drum in my ear.
It hurt before but now I feel comfortable.
I still hear the drum going boom boom.
The drum made me feel that it will be ok and I feel the mosion inside of me so now I feel so much better. Bumping into the trees. I hear men saying holy.
But now I feel greatful, in this holy place I'm glad that I got nailed ont he cross. Now this story is into a end good-bye for now my good friend."
I couldn't keep my mouth from gaping at her piece of work. This girl, deemed average or at grade level in math, reading and writing, thought and expressed in clear writing(!) the feelings evoked from this music piece. Mind-blowing.
In addition to that, the ADHD kid was focused and writing like no other.
Now I believe in art therapy. Now I believe in using a multitude of mediums not just for the sake of using them or for the sake of being creative. Now I believe in using a multitude of mediums to differentiate so that kids are able to realize and foster the intelligence they possess.