Summer School, Week 2: art therapy
I am teaching a sculpture class and two painting classes. Because my groups are so small (and 'special'), I am trying like hell to accomodate what I think these kids need, by allowing them flexibility in media, projects, and even how much time they put in. If they reach a stopping point and clean up adequately (I remain rigid about that; I am the Brush Nazi), I let them just relax and socialize or play hacky sack.
Yesterday in my Sculpture class, the girl who has an aide refused to do any sculpture and became a little edgy and defiant. The aide is new and does not have any lists of modifications for her; all we know is she's what we call a "runner", prone to taking off if not monitored. Everyone is taking great pains to not upset this girl, because...well, I simply don't know. They walk on eggshells around her like she swallowed TNT. I've been around several kids who are prone to episodic fits, outbursts, and freak-outs; I've even seen them lose it. Never have I seen the adults so anxious to keep things mellow. To be blunt, if she's prone to violence, I'd like to know. Regardless, she was not going to do my project and she told me she didn't like art. She didn't want to use markers or crayons or pencils, and she wanted nothing to do with sculpture. Luckily, the aide (an experienced special ed teacher) figured out that she didn't want to be around anyone else and talked her going into an empty room and just drawing for the whole time. She settled down, and any potential crisis was averted. In fact, she opened up enough to tell the aide about how when she was five, she watched her sister get murdered, and a number of other things that are gong to greatly affect how I approach things with her.
We're playing around with Surrealism in my painting class. (It's self-serving enough to be a crowd-pleaser.) A girl whose "I'm dumb and trashy" persona rubs me wrong was actually getting into the painting she is working on. She sat apart from the others added some rudimentary drawing over an abstract watercolor background. The drawings were primitive at best, but they spoke volumes. A tornado was about to hit a house, next to which were a group of people of different sizes. A hanged man was suspended from nothing, a doglike creature grazed happily, oblivious; and the entire painting was peppered with sets of three crosses. She was subdued, but more than happy to explain it to me. In short, it was about how things actually were compared to how they are "supposed to be". There are no tornadoes here, and my smattering of art therapy told me that a house generally represents home life. My chest tightened. It was then that she mentioned her brother & I figured out who she is: her younger brother is the Problem Child in my Bitter Half's class, the one who brought the airsoft pistol to class, the one who gains strength & power through lying & stealing, the one exhibiting inmate traits at the age of nine. At any given time they are moving between four different households because their parents have chemical issues and are in the cycle of broken up/back together/broken up again. Things change so rapidly that sometimes the younger ones would come from one house in the morning, then we'd get a call to send them somewhere else in the afternoon. I'm glad she's responding so well to painting, but who heals the art therapist? Guess it's time to do some painful sketching.
Yesterday in my Sculpture class, the girl who has an aide refused to do any sculpture and became a little edgy and defiant. The aide is new and does not have any lists of modifications for her; all we know is she's what we call a "runner", prone to taking off if not monitored. Everyone is taking great pains to not upset this girl, because...well, I simply don't know. They walk on eggshells around her like she swallowed TNT. I've been around several kids who are prone to episodic fits, outbursts, and freak-outs; I've even seen them lose it. Never have I seen the adults so anxious to keep things mellow. To be blunt, if she's prone to violence, I'd like to know. Regardless, she was not going to do my project and she told me she didn't like art. She didn't want to use markers or crayons or pencils, and she wanted nothing to do with sculpture. Luckily, the aide (an experienced special ed teacher) figured out that she didn't want to be around anyone else and talked her going into an empty room and just drawing for the whole time. She settled down, and any potential crisis was averted. In fact, she opened up enough to tell the aide about how when she was five, she watched her sister get murdered, and a number of other things that are gong to greatly affect how I approach things with her.
We're playing around with Surrealism in my painting class. (It's self-serving enough to be a crowd-pleaser.) A girl whose "I'm dumb and trashy" persona rubs me wrong was actually getting into the painting she is working on. She sat apart from the others added some rudimentary drawing over an abstract watercolor background. The drawings were primitive at best, but they spoke volumes. A tornado was about to hit a house, next to which were a group of people of different sizes. A hanged man was suspended from nothing, a doglike creature grazed happily, oblivious; and the entire painting was peppered with sets of three crosses. She was subdued, but more than happy to explain it to me. In short, it was about how things actually were compared to how they are "supposed to be". There are no tornadoes here, and my smattering of art therapy told me that a house generally represents home life. My chest tightened. It was then that she mentioned her brother & I figured out who she is: her younger brother is the Problem Child in my Bitter Half's class, the one who brought the airsoft pistol to class, the one who gains strength & power through lying & stealing, the one exhibiting inmate traits at the age of nine. At any given time they are moving between four different households because their parents have chemical issues and are in the cycle of broken up/back together/broken up again. Things change so rapidly that sometimes the younger ones would come from one house in the morning, then we'd get a call to send them somewhere else in the afternoon. I'm glad she's responding so well to painting, but who heals the art therapist? Guess it's time to do some painful sketching.
spoken by Sister Morpheme at 8:08 AM
4 Rants:
R. D. Laing (Cult shrink figure of the 60s) may be more relevant here than the tons pedagogical mod crap. Thumbnail version: in a schizo world not being schizo is less sane than being schizo. Laing used art therapy and worked with hard core cases in the UK that had been given up by less kookie shrinks.
My Art Therapy coursework was considerably more tame, but it certainly worked with certain populations. The mantra in the early 90s was "process over product", but it was covert and unendorsed fun to extrapolate conditions based on finished artworks. If I recall, schizophrenics were easily identified by works incorporating a series of stacked heads, gradually increasing in size.
"extrapolate conditions based on finished artworks"
only if you could get not just students but faculty, staff, parents, and most especially the Sociopath to contribute...
Another intriguing one is that the omission of the nose on a portrait indicates symbolic castration.
Ask me about the "house-tree-person" diagnostic.
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