Getting back into the classroom: depressed kids & making art

I taught a few weeks of summer art camp this hot, glorious August, and was struck by the intensity of emotion to all aspects of the experience: I felt scream-worthy exhilaration to be in a physical space, with materials, able to set up a studio environment for young artists after months of none of that connection; I felt deeply anxious about my abilities as a teaching artist - I couldn’t quite remember if I am capable of it - it felt like it’s been so long; and I felt silenced and struck by what felt like a lot of depressed kids in my classes.

The 8 and 9 year olds I worked with were 6, 7, and 8 during lockdown and likely missed most of first or second grade in person. For the first part of each afternoon class, they all seemed exhausted, burnt out, and melancholy - no interacting with each other, only with me a little bit while we played some warm up games. I felt exhausted myself each day, and could feel myself digging deep into my muscles for extra enthusiasm, play, and game-leading, trying to give them some fun and levity.

I found that once we started working with materials, their giggles and laughter started to emerge.

On our first day, I demoed some simple print making and asked them to think about their favorite things, the things that make them smile, the things they are most passionate about. Every one of them was very intent on working solo and diving into their work, accustomed to being separated from each other at the table, in their masks.

Some remained silent the entire time, but responded when I asked about their work; others started talking, goofing, and musing while making, engaging those around them.

••••

I can feel the isolation, depression, and social nervousness. I love that we have art to help us ease back into ourselves. There are conversations that never happen unless we are making something with our hands, together and separately.

I have no conclusion to this; these are just a string of thoughts and observations as we continue through this devastating pandemic. I know I am so fortunate to have vaccine access, employment again, access to art and resourced organizations. I feel exceedingly lucky, privileged, energized to be with youth again, anxious to improve my abilities to nurture our social-emotional selves in the art room. I also feel lucky to be doing it part-time, as one of several jobs I hold: I know I don’t have the stamina to teach full time, nor the expertise.

I appreciate the honesty, openness, and call for a new way in this blog post by Ari Christine, Teaching is A Woman: Why I Closed My Classroom Door. She advocates for virtual learning as a permanent option for students; prioritization of teacher wellness and health; taking the risks of COVID seriously before sending kids & teachers back to the classroom; and a much larger say for teachers in the whole mess. Point blank - teachers are wayyyy undervalued, and are always expected to serve. As a teaching artist who is always in a temporary, part time situation in schools and programs I work in, I have never been subjected to the full time pressure of classroom teaching and school department politics, so I can only learn through these kinds of personal narrative and analysis. Teaching artists have their own battles to advocate for…. but that’s for another post.

shapeshifting

I’ve been reading about Celtic shapeshifters, who were the shamans of pre-Christian Ireland. They could access the other side easily (spirit world), and were often considered poets, philosophers, creators - no doubt there was power-claiming and manipulation of status even for these animal-connected humans - but it’s dreamy to imagine a de-institutionalized version of spirituality, (of which there are many examples all over the world).

Shapeshifters were known to take on the form of animals, in order to access information they needed, to carry out a confrontation, or to simply build upon their current circumstance. A power, a freedom, a skill, an ability, a fluidity to existence and being and state.

Sometimes it feels as though I ‘shapeshift’ all day: taking in and letting out, absorbing the thrill of those around me. Other times my body feels like a cage. I understand others truly have to shapeshift on the daily just to survive in these united states.

I think of Nick Cave’s costumes, I think of animorphs, I think of ruby amanze’s breathtaking drawings, I think of the way we imagine freedom, I think of all the ways the privileged of us take our freedoms for granted and fail to extend them to all the shapeshifters around us.

learning from middle schoolers

Artist and co-teacher Star Hamilton and I have just witnessed the 8th graders we have worked with for the past 2 years (since they were wee 7th graders!) graduate this past month!  All of our internal parent selves burst forth as we had our final few classes with them, and inwardly weeped at the end of an 'era' of our adventurous mornings with them. Transitions are the definition of that age (and every age), and I think we mourn the loss of them as a collective group - their bumbling, lively dynamics with each other, and the indescribable edge they seem balanced on: one foot in childhood, and one in a very self-realized adult world. 

The alive and unfiltered way in which they tend to inhabit the world is infectious.  At that age they embody all the contradictions of the teenage world that is waiting for them, whilst holding onto full faced grins and hilariously self confident quirks.  They don't hear anything said to them as a group, and hang onto every word said to them individually.  Don't we all, no matter the age, thrive on individual attention, one-on-one conversation, feedback tailored exactly to our situation?  The rest of the noise floats over our heads, too. 

self portraits.... :D 

I learned so much about my process of preparation as a teaching artist; what to ask; what to let happen; and how to make as much room as possible for individualized attention.  The more structure and clarity, the more room for young people to take projects and run with them, on solo. Balancing a vastness of supplies with very specific ones can help move students through steps on their own, before you need to attend to their individualized questions.  and more and more and more... 

internal-external

my dear friend Gyun sent me this photo from his art residency travels out west, in the caves of New Mexico.  

this could be the bloom of our guts, no? 

those lines, oh so sexy! 

what makes you bloom, inwardly? 

for me, recently: a moment of verbal understanding, followed by piercing eye contact, with a close friend.  brighten, my insides do. 

I have been slightly nauseous for several days in a row, and I have thoughts of us all being poisoned, slowly, by our shower water, ever-present guar gum, inescapable wifi signals, mold and dust as the city upends itself in development tsunamis and factory tear-downs. 

A colleague in north philly stood in the sun yesterday with us and spoke eloquently of the mightiness of plants: they can read human gender. they can respond to moisture and sun by breaking through concrete. their consciousness is downright otherworldly. (or THIS worldly). We can correspond in our blooming, and live. 

 - How cavernous are we, how tunneled do we let ourselves become - 

source materials

I've been studying the gut.  But only vaguely, somewhat half-heartedly, with a bit of a screen between my searching and the root.  I know we are bombarded these days by promising probiotics, pretty kombuchas, and leaky-gut videos on social media, warning us of the longterm health effects of damaged, low-bacteria-count intestines.  

So I just keep drawing my own intestines, in hopes of bringing them some comfort, some ease. 

Since childhood my stomach has both served me and tortured me: I have memories of spoonfuls of mineral oil, having my stomach prodded by the doctor, and lots of time in the bathroom. My stomach and its conversations have taken different forms at each phase of my life, and my awareness of the interconnectivity of my internal and external systems has expanded. 

I oscillate between using poetry to understand my own physical undertakings/reactions; and published, spoken, or googled information drops.  This has led to a lifelong commitment to focusing in on the nervous system and its dealings in my eating, digestion, metabolism.  And yet the poetry of it often gets in the way of all the directives.  I know how certain foods make me feel. And yet I know how certain situations make me feel even more intimately.  Is it the intake, or the INTAKE? 

I remember a film maker, at a film festival, musing on his need to maintain a diet of specific visual material: he compared art to food.  It seems as though each of our presences is also food for one another - we intake, and outtake - each other.  We digest whole moments, and our stomachs buzz with anticipatory joy; anxious clenching; ease-filled air; bubbly curiosity. (too cheesy? like cheese pizza? which, btw, I can digest quite well in the company of teen artists, celebrating... but not in a moment of stress-filled solo eating)

more to come on this... thanks for reading about one of my (many) obsessions.

lovely anatomy below, from an old textbook, fffound at the gem that is mostly books. 

the state of the air today

I am falling in love with light.  

We all can't help but moan or exclaim to each other about the weather - we all dismiss "weather talk" like its indicative of our shallowness, our inability to connect more deeply, our universal "passing the time" discussion choice.  But isn't it our collective aquarium?  The state of our skin? The moisture of our eyelids, the comfort of our eardrums? 

We are porous creatures, made of water, bags of organs walking around, just trying to keep it together. All "quietly struggling", as I read recently in a reader's contribution to Sun magazine. 

The valves in our legs open and close, squeezing our blood upward, against gravity. 

I love that we are collectively affected by the return of light, and these spring days where we both shiver and sweat within the same 8 hours. 

this body is so cavernous

It's on the days that I let my blood sugar drop too low, going too long between meals, that I am reminded that my body is on a continuum.  That each 24 hours is not separate unto itself -- or each 16 if sleep is the turn of the chapters, the space between each ending and beginning.  That my hours are strung together unceasingly, linked and linked, dictating the new piece.  The heart never rests. 

When my blood sugar drops and I start to sweat and shake, I feel like a little animal, scurrying for food. I'll eat anything in sight and just taking a bite starts to calm my nerves.

Emptiness must eventually be filled.

When I moved to a new city, I coasted through space in silence. The first time a new friend grasped my shoulder as he told me a story, I almost burst into tears. My skin had thirsted for touch, without me knowing it. That first drop of familiar touch was like the start of the heart-skin caloric intake I needed.

The body keeps wanting, and wanting, and wanting. 

Nutrition and touch and movement and people. 

It is line drawings that allows me to connect the full places to the empty ones: When I draw my internal organs on paper, intersecting and being embraced by the spine, the clavicle, the ribs, the internal growling & rumbling gets a little squeezed, a little quieter, a little more up in my throat, out into my words, and across the air to another being ready to love. 

the sacred/the untraceable

This winter has taken such a toll on me, and those around me.  My dry skin & hair, my musty-smelling coat, the sluggishness of my body: I am ready for the sun. 

I have been working to get my website organized and available for the past few months, and through the process have felt subsumed in technology: click, click, click... worshipping at the altar of the screen.  It's got me thinking about the sacred-ness of what is not tracked, what is experienced, endured, felt beyond the reach of the screen. 

I take solace in the fact that there are still many things that are untraceable.

my glances

eye contact & a laugh

fingers grazing fingers of a loved one

my decision making: half of a banana (the season-less, pervasive fruit) or a slice of provolone or buttered toast before bed?  my stomach growling.

the flux of my weight throughout the month, the tiny changes in the rubbing of my clothes as the water in my tissues levels itself out with the shifts of progesterone from day to day.

the smell of my sister's hair, so familiar

the things that happen under the surface and carve out the present : how available I am to the world

documentation is no longer sacred, but it is celebration: our desperate hearts capturing as time slips between our fingers. that which goes unphotographed: Sacred or merely lived?