Teach Secondary Issue 14.8

Throughout, I made it clear to them that the purpose of the lesson wasn’t to create ‘perfect’ artworks, but to generate ideas; that so long as they at least tried to express some original thoughts, they would have done the work. Screwing up thework My students mostly seemed to enjoy this, though some did struggle with a lack of ideas and needed some help with suggestions. At the end of the lesson I encouraged the students to talk about what they’d done, but this was met withmixed success. Some students screwed their work up and described it as ‘ no good ’ – even when I’d praised it during the lesson. I’ve since considered the possibility that those students who screwed their work up, or who didn’t want to showwhat they’d done because they thought it wasn’t all that good, might have struggled with their self-esteem. However, given how important it can be for teachers to understand which of their students struggle with self-esteem the most, I still found the exercise to have been very helpful. Among those who did want to show their work, I asked them questions about what they had chosen to draw, and encouraged them to think of positive things they could say about other people’s work. Uncovering the uncomfortable In all, I’d say I’m pleased with the results of my attempts to create art lessons that promote empathy, emotional intelligence and wellbeing, and would highly recommend taking inspiration from art therapy to other teachers. I would, however, caution against using specific therapeutic techniques –my own lesson activities were inspired by art therapy in the broadest sense – since art therapy can uncover some painful things. Art therapists are, after all, licenced professionals trained at dealing with clients expressing their most painful memories. Teachers, needless to say, are not. During a subsequent lesson with some older students about surrealism, Lucien Freud and the subconscious, a member of the class drew something that was so alarming it had to be reported as a safeguarding concern immediately after the lesson concluded. When working within the space where art meets emotion, youmay have to prepare yourself for the possibility that you could uncover some uncomfortable things. That said, I hope some readers will feel sufficiently inspired to consider trying out some of these ideas in their own classrooms. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alice Guile is a secondary school art teacher 53 teachwire.net/secondary H E A LT H & W E L L B E I N G