Today, I worked with the kids again and we did art based on South African culture. Seeing the way these classes are taught gives me a good idea of what to do with the WYN kids for the coming school year. The way they go about expressing themselves is so pure and without restraint. It's so rare to see in kids our age. At this point in their lives, all their little hands jump into the air to say something or answer a question and speak their mind. As they grow older, they become more boxed in. They'll get quieter.
My goal is to foster their creativity, harness it, and let it inspire their future selves for the rest of their lives.
When you ask a child to list the uses of a rubber eraser they would give you pages and pages of uses. When you ask an adult, they'll list one or two. A child's imagination isn't stunted or boxed in. A child will think about how you could attach the eraser to other things or what if it's 10 feet tall and extremely bouncy? An adult will imagine a small pink object bought in packs of 3.
We drew an outline of Africa to have them draw inside and that's where they started but the lot of them surprised me. They took a piece of chalk outside of Africa and drew it to the end of the pavement about 20 feet away. Soon, there were long sharks, whales, giraffes, and all sorts of things surrounding the continent we had given them. As college students, we saw the outline given to us and immediately thought to only draw inside it but the kids wanted outside of it. Some went a little too far and drew on the wall, which I had to stop for fear of policeman thinking we were making graffiti, but the point is that their imaginations are so big right now and what is public education to box us in? Of course there's always more than one answer. Nowadays, we're asked to call upon that power again to "think critically" but how do we do that after being taught to a test and to educational "standards"?
I live to give power to creativity.
I also watched Mary Poppins for the first time today thanks to Molly. She and I went to see it and I have never felt so many feels as I did in this movie. Also, I was like "wut" a lot but I was mostly sad and giggly. The imagination there was so crucial to the family loving each other and realizing what was beyond their noses, beyond their fingers, the people and human beings we all really are. And, really, we all need to play.
I wish it was easier for people to express themselves. Maybe then we'd have a better understanding of each other and therefore fight less...
Peace. Love. Live.
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