to affect what happens
• learn to attend to a task at hand, in a safe and predictable environment
• practice regulating emotions
Example: A child who began the year screaming and throwing materials when frustrated with the outcome of his work learned to manage his feelings so that by year’s end he could step away for a few minutes and then return to try again.
• practice executive functions like setting a goal, anticipating consequences, and carrying out plans
Example: Construction projects, including sewing, support cognitive executive functions and require planning. Having decided to make a playhouse, a child made a sketch of what she had in mind, prepared a list of materials, thought through different ways to create doors and windows, and, through problem solving, made a door knocker in order to complete her project.
• learn these things in an environment in which they are not publicly labeled and featured as “traumatized” or “abused”
Example: Children are not gathered into ArtBreak groups by mental health diagnoses or behavioral goals. Goals and functions of the expressive therapies continuum guide referrals, and groups are formed mostly to align with schedules rather than grade level or age.
ACADEMIC ALIGNMENT
ArtBreak is particularly aligned with mathematics skills, fitting well within such standards of mathematical practice as
• making sense of problems and persevering in solving them
Example: A child finds a way to make movable arms and legs for a robot.
• using appropriate tools strategically
Example: The participants measure and mark with rulers, use tape measures, use awls and brass fasteners, and punch holes strategically with a hand-held hole punch.
• attending to precision
Example: The students calculate fabric yardage, find midpoints on objects, cut cardboard to exactly form a box lid, design a fastener, and design a pattern for a three-dimensional box.
• looking for and making use of structure
Example: A child figures out how to make a wearable table.
• constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others, at the elementary level elucidated as constructing arguments using concrete referents such as objects, drawings, diagrams, and actions
Example: A student wanted to build a “hideout” and presented a diagram and a written plan supporting his request for two really large cardboard boxes.
ArtBreak’s foundation is built on cardboard, paper, tape, paint, ribbons and strings, repurposed materials, and lots of ornamental doodads all chosen and organized with regard to the framework of the expressive therapies continuum. Its studio is a community of freedom and order that encourages expressiveness, problem solving, and creativity. The next chapter details the workings of the expressive therapies continuum and other elements of ArtBreak’s creative framework.
2
A Creative Framework
“When I have been able to transform a group—and here I mean all the members of a group, myself included—into a community of learners, then the excitement has been almost beyond belief.”
—Carl Rogers, The Carl Rogers Reader
ARTBREAK INCORPORATES three frameworks that integrate a manner in which to relate to children, a way to think about and offer art materials, and realistic expectations in terms of group dynamics. Formally the frameworks are known as child-centered education, the expressive therapies continuum (ETC), and Bruce Tuckman’s developmental stages of group counseling.
CHILD-CENTERED EDUCATION
Child-centered education is associated with many contemporary descriptors of teaching and learning—including those that are active, collaborative, inquiry-based, and problem-based—many of which are related to the structure of lessons and classrooms. I find it helpful to go to the work of Carl Rogers and his person-centered theory of counseling and psychotherapy. A psychologist by training, at the end of his career Rogers began to apply his humanistic theory to teaching and concluded in Freedom to Learn that “The only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning.” This dynamic, which transfers power from the teacher to the student, is what informs student, or child-centered, education.
Is there evidence that a person-centered environment is effective? Yes. In counseling and psychology we have known for decades about the importance of the relationship between client and therapist in creating positive outcomes in therapy. In education, as early as the 1960s, social psychologists were documenting the dimensions of a positive classroom climate and its role in supporting student learning. In recent years professional associations like the American Psychological Association through its initiative, The Other 3 Rs Model for Student Learning, elaborated by Rena Faye Subotnik and Robert J. Sternberg in Optimizing Student Success in School with the Other Three Rs: Reasoning, Resilience, and Responsibility; and the American School Counselor Association have re-affirmed the importance of social/emotional education in schools. Research studies have linked many aspects of social and emotional learning with gains in academic competence and found that arts programming with positive outcomes for children and young people are ones that attend to the social/emotional environment.
Carl Rogers emphasized the interpersonal relationship between teacher (referred to as the facilitator of learning) and students. He outlined three necessary qualities of a facilitator of learning: (1) realness; (2) prizing the learner; and (3) empathic understanding. Table 2.1 pairs these qualities with suggestions for ArtBreak.
Realness
Realness, or genuineness, is being transparent in one’s feelings in a matter-of-fact way. In ArtBreak I am being real when I take time to be aware of my own feelings and try to express them in a constructive way.
Table 2.1. Qualities of a Child-Centered ArtBreak Facilitator
Reference: Carl R. Rogers, Freedom to Learn (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing, 1969).
Example: When children in an ArtBreak group, carried away in their enthusiasm for finishing their work, simply could not stop in time to clean up and ended up leaving paint, cardboard, tools, and lots of other materials strewn about the studio, I was dismayed and exasperated at having to spend forty minutes tidying up the room. Indignant, I photographed the studio in its disarray. My first thoughts were of revenge: “I will close the cardboard section next week, and probably the paint section too!” After some reflection, I came to the thought that the students were actually excited to be in the studio again after weeks of snow days and had also probably forgotten about our routines. For our next session I sat down with the children at a table, showed them the photographs on my phone, and explained that it took me a lot of time to tidy up and was therefore not able to finish some of my other work that day. I asked them what we could do to make sure we clean up together and within our time limits. The children suggested they would pay more attention
