Week 6 - February 23rd

  Takeaways: 

• An expressive art therapist is observant, present, inventive, curious, and playful.

• Art making builds skills, resources, increases self-care, self-esteem, and confidence; it give pleasure, joy, and fun, cognitive clarity and processing, and it works as techniques to release emotions.

• There are three stages in expressive are theraphy. The first one is regulating, calming and self-soothing. Stage two is refraiming of beliefs, releasing of feelings, and reorganizing brain. The third stage is about forgiveness, closure, new insights, and hope.

Reflection:

Including expressive art therapy is a great idea for our students. We can do expressive art therapy at the beginning of the class in order for our students to regulate. When they arrive to our classroom, they come from very different contexts and we do not really know what they have been through. That is why it is a good idea to start making some art for them to be calmer and more focused. Besides, we can also see how they really feel by looking at their drawings. We can start asking them more open questions and always being aware of our students situation. Moreover, all the art that they create can also be displayed in the classroom or used in future activites. All art that they create must also be respected, it is important to tell our students that they are no ugly drawings, paintings, sculptures or dances.

Activity in class:

One activity to do is to ask them to draw whatever they can think of while listening to music. The teacher can change the music and students draw a situation that applies for the music that they are listening.

References

Wallace, K. (2021). Counselling Skills and Expressive Arts Therapy. [pdf]. 

Wallace, K. & Lewis, P.J. Chapter 2: Art. In Trauma informed teaching through play art narrative (PAN) Boston, MA: Brill/Sense.

Wallace, K. & Lewis, P.J. Chapter 8: Trauma Resolution Workbook. In Trauma informed teaching through play art narrative (PAN) Boston, MA: Brill/Sense.

Took Play Quiz (see on section "Tests and Quizzes")