Thoughts: Building Hope with our Children

April 22, 2019

Easter Sunday

I woke up on Easter morning in New York to news that 8 bombs had blown up at Easter celebrations around the country. Watching the events occurring in Sri Lanka from a distance was more painful than I thought. It felt like I would have much rather been in the midst of it all with my family and loved ones physically by my side. It was a day of sadness.. I did everything I can not to be angry about the situation but allowed myself to quietly mourn my home. It just felt like a day of waiting, anticipating some other explosion, more loss of lives. 

As a source of solace, I was thinking in hope of what ‘Let’s Build Great Things’ needs to become in order to prevent this from happening in our future. A quote I referred to was: 

‘We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also it’s greatest curse is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear’ - Elisabeth Kübler Ross 

Yes. 

I later found out that the author of this quote was from a psychiatrist who thinks about death and dying, and published a theory on five stages of grief. How timely. 

I thought of LBGT as a means of hope in a moment filled with sadness. All I could do from this far away place was to work. Push forward without letting these events slide us back. To use these events as an opportunity for conversation that is so often avoided in our society. 

How do we react to these events in next week’s art class? 

An idea for a big mural popped up, a way to express this feeling of hurt, to make a statement about unity and hopefully convince the kids of the idea that violence isn’t worth it.

Update, June 18, 2019

Art Therapy Lesson Idea:

A month of elaborations later, a more practical, charette-like idea developed over a phone call with Sahani. This was expertly and sensitively executed by Sahani and Kavya, as a precursor to our regular class:

1. Give the students an A4 sheet folded in half.

2. Also have crayons ready for the kids to use

2. Summarize the events we all know (as nicely as you can) and ask them to draw on the left how they FEEL about the events that have occurred. It can be abstract or specific. Tell the kids it has to be a quick drawing, and time them for 5 minutes (be lenient).

4. Ask them NOT TO write their names anywhere on the drawing or show it to anyone while they are drawing.

5. After the 5 mins, collect all the drawings, jumble them up and re-distribute so each kid gets another kids drawing.

6. Ask each student to describe what the drawing is FEELING.

7. Show them images of hope (There were images going around showing solidarity among diverse communities and religions) and discuss how to make Sri Lanka a better place to live.

8. Give them another 5 minutes and ask them to draw a their feelings about a happier Sri Lanka!

9. Keep all the drawings together and discuss.

Here are some of the drawings that emerged from the class.

The left, watching the news on TV and getting scared. The right (My own interpretation), peaceful discussions and unity among all.

The left is a drawing of smoke coming out of a church. The right is text and color expressions for a united Sri Lanka

The right, Rebuilding the church by all members of community, regardless of religion.

The TV - a source of unwarranted trauma