There is a difference between delivering the art curriculum to students and a therapeutic approach used in art lessons that may help young people grow emotionally. Sometimes teachers use art as therapy intuitively, which helps them manage their students’ behaviour. However, an awareness of how art can change the dynamics in a classroom may significantly upgrade the quality of education and students’ ability to improve their conduct.
Teachers may start with the same activities they have been using with children for years. The photo-point drawing worked well in my primary classroom at the beginning of every school year. It was an enjoyable task that I learned while I was taking additional education courses at the University of Toronto. My students brought photographs of themselves. They cut out their images from the photographs, pasted them on sheets of paper and drew a background around the cutout figures. I never instructed the children about what they were supposed to draw. It was up to them to share through their drawing what they felt, liked, feared, or disliked. This creative activity could have ended right after they finished drawing, but usually two more parts were added to the lesson—conversations in groups about what they drew, and chatting between me and individual students.
The goal for this initial art lesson was to provide an opportunity for students to express their feelings and for me to get to know my new class better. By decreasing the tension and anxiety associated with the first few days of the new year, my students felt better about school, and, at the same time, I was able to set more informed individual expectations and goals.
Another practice that I used in my classroom was allowing children to keep their doodle books in their desks. When they were anxious, bored, or simply finished with their work in other subjects, they could open their doodle books and draw or write anything that came to their minds. Once in a while, they had the opportunity to share what they drew or wrote with their classmates and me. If they wanted to keep these books to themselves, that was okay too. These doodle books used in grade one often spontaneously changed into writer’s journals at the end of the year or in grade two. The aim was to avoid unnecessary misbehaviour between planned activities and to build up children’s awareness of their skills and interests.
There are always children who don’t believe in their abilities and need more encouragement than others. Read-aloud sessions, combined with extended activities in visual art, drama, and dance were very helpful. One of my favourite authors was Peter H. Reynolds with his three books published by Scholastic. The Dot was an important resource to start working with students who weren’t confident enough to draw. The book titled Ish was very useful for introducing doodle books to children. Finally, Sky Color opened my students’ imagination to a non-judgmental approach to creativity, which has always been the main feature of art therapy.
Interestingly, sometimes I used the same books in drama and dance. Encouraging students to think about what kind of dots they would like to be and having them act out their ideas resulted in creating remarkable tableaux filled with emotional statements, such as “I am a lonely dot hiding from others,” or “We are many dots that like to hold hands and stay together.” Adding music to a lesson and asking children to “dance the colour of the sky,” allowed them to engage in movement free of judgment and express “sunny, rainy, or cloudy” feelings.
After I retired from teaching, I discovered the Canadian Art Therapy Association magazine Envisage published three times a year online. In this magazine, art therapists share their artwork and experiences of working within their communities, including art therapy activities with young children. It is an interesting resource that teachers may enjoy perusing in their free time.
In the 2023 winter issue of Envisage, Patricia MacAulay published her reflection on “what children are trying to share with the world” titled “Ways of Seeing.” The other focus of her work was to find out “what children are signalling and what we adults are perceiving.” Educators can benefit from visiting Patricia MacAulay’s website (threequestions.ca). It may change their perspective on how to connect with young students and how to help them in their emotional and social development.
In another interesting article titled “Making It, Create,” which touches on how “to use art as a medium to enhance the emotional intelligence of the next generation,” published in the 2022 fall issue of Envisage, Christy Herdman reflected on her workshops for kids focused on using art as a “medium to improve children’s emotional self-regulation skills.”
Sometimes students’ behaviour in the classroom can be intense and difficult to understand. This may cause teachers to feel not fully equipped or confident enough to find solutions. Art therapy can bring a resolution to this problem, relaxing children and educators and making their relationship much closer and free of fear or power struggles.
References
Peter H. Reynolds, The Dot, Scholastic, 2003.
Peter H. Reynolds, Ish, Scholastic, 2004.
Peter H. Reynolds, Sky Color, Scholastic, 2012.
Patricia MacAulay, Ways of Seeing, Canadian Art Therapy Association Online Magazine Envisage, Winter Issue, 2023.
Christy Herdman, Making It, Create, Canadian Art Therapy Association Online Magazine Envisage, Fall Issue, 2022.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Nike Leskowsky
Anna Nike Leskowsky was a journalist in Poland. After immigrating to Canada in 1990, she worked as an elementary school teacher until she retired in 2018. Her articles and essays written in English have been published in Canadian Teacher Magazine, Canadian Art Therapy Association Online Magazine Envisage, Canadian Immigrant Magazine, The Toronto Star, and college textbooks. Anna Nike Leskowsky lives in Toronto.
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Fall 2023 issue.
