Ok ok ok, I understand something that I have been doing wrong. Wrong isn't a useful word - but describes a place I haven't explored thoughtfully yet. It feels equal parts incredible to understand and really stupid that it took me this long to figure out. Things my boss says to me float around in my brain until I have the kind of realization where his words actually land so they have meaning I can fully comprehend enough to apply - I'm sure the kids are having similar experiences of the disembodied information they are being force-fed in all directions.
I'm forming concrete structures to actively brainstorm with my older students about simple symbols - If we are making an art piece exploring pathways through their lives, as a group we come up with all different kinds of pathways that we can think of, writing down words, making quick simple sketches - stairs is an obvious one, a student threw out a bridge over a lake. When I began working individually, I could ask them what their personal path looks like, is it straight, narrow, smooth, confusing, and there was enough exploration in our original brainstorm for them to tell me what their individual paths look like. Developing personal symbols is hard, and takes a great deal of sophistication and support - but maybe for the younger ones, ALL symbols require this kind of thoughtful support. I keep trying to jump into imagining worlds together and finding that NONE of the tools required to play like that are there. That doesn't mean they are empty of resources, and the 6th graders seem to particularly desire the feeling of being successful, of being good and smart and knowledgeable.
There is a very mean quality to a lot of the student interactions at this particular school - though not uncommon amongst middle schoolers I find. Last year during and after an end of year award ceremony, the vitriol of the unawarded students was palpable in the hallways. Some of my students offer to pass out work explicitly so they can destroy certain successful student's work in the classroom. In a trauma training I strongly remember the Facilitator stating that communities and individuals that feel like they are losing a resource will target those they see receiving access to those resources. I see it at the dog park, amongst my siblings, on the crews I used to run, turning against our own for a scrap of food, of love, of acknowledgment or fair treatment. Being stuck in the feeling of having a deficit, like the bottomless hunger of the traumatized child my mother once was, makes receiving nourishment even when it is offered really difficult. How can I make what I'm offering more substantive, more obviously nourishing for the young ones, caught in the breach, at the precipice of falling through a crack?
I can take a few large steps back with the 6th graders. Instead of throwing them in to make worlds they can't quite see and without more developed tools to recognize the difference between roads and walls and villians and guides, we can start simpler and build together, off the things they already know and are processing from the school and various media - We could start with a waterworld and brainstorm what lives there, imagine how both real and mythological creatures survive in that environment, what kind of cities get built and relationships get formed (who protects or helps who etc), and then build their own versions by weeding through what held meaning for them in the group imagining - letting them organize the information we have sourced from each other within that supported context (and the subconscious awarenesses about survival and relationships gets worked through naturally, since that is part of what they know of the world - their logic that has formed from how they themselves have learned how to survive). Then maybe move to another environment, maybe Desert world. Maybe these things eventually come together to make a large map of student ideas about what the world is composed of, practice we have all done together about what IS and what is Possible. What if we slowed down time and allowed ourselves to be at the beginning of creation, imagining things into being one step at a time - like your photography, like god, beginning with separating light from dark, space from time. Starting with what they know helps them find themselves on the map maybe, maybe that container helps guide me to where they are. Maybe I can be curious about what structures they DO have, rather then being so distracted by the ones they are lacking.
I'm listening Boss, I promise. I'm doing the best I can to see what I'm looking at, and how.
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