It was wonderful to get started with Session II of Mind Move Make! I was excited to see many students from the last session and to welcome one new student to our group.
For this session we will work with the following central idea throughout all twelve classes:
Humans can choose to cultivate kindness and make the world a better place.
We will reflect on kindness to one's self and kindness to others, along with contemplating kind actions we can take in our own lives to improve the world around us. To start the first class, I posted the central idea in a prominent place in our classroom and asked a student to read it out loud to everyone. I wanted to make sure all of the students understood the word "cultivate", and when I asked who wanted to define the word only two students raised their hands. I chose a student to explain the word to everyone, and he did a better job than I could have! He said, "Cultivate usually refers to agriculture, but it can be applied to many different things. Basically, to cultivate means to grow something". Wonderful!
Humans can choose to "grow" kindness and make the world a better place
Once I was sure everyone understood the central idea, we went around and shared one kind thing we've experienced recently, something someone else has done for us. Something that made our world just a little bit better. I mentioned that my partner, Seth, makes coffee for me every morning before he leaves for work; this simple action dramatically improves my morning!
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| My Hands Are My Heart by Gabriel Orozco |
After the discussion I introduced students to My Hands Are My Heart, a piece of art by Gabriel Orozco. In the piece, there are two images of Orozco. In one image his hands are closed over a piece of clay that was used to create bricks in Cholula, Mexico. In the second image, he holds his hands open to show the imprint his hands have made on the clay. I asked them to look at the image, think about the title, and try to connect both back to our central idea. I broke the students into three small groups so they could have a conversation about the artwork. For this session I created sketchbooks for everyone, so they also reflected on the ideas in their sketchbook.
I was impressed by the ideas they generated after looking at this piece of artwork and connecting it to the idea of "growing" kindness! Many students connected the shape of the clay to the shape of a heart. One student wrote, "My hands are my heart because they do so much for us and our heart does so much for us too." A third student explained that our hands are what we use to DO kind things while our heart is what we use to THINK and FEEL kind things. When everyone was finished discussing and writing about the work we came back together as a group to share ideas. If you'd like to hear Orozco speak about this piece himself, here is a link to an audio file of him describing the work.
Then it was time to move our bodies! Once again this session I will start each movement portion of the class with quiet relaxation so that the children can decompress after a long day at school. We listened to the soothing sound of the singing bowl and paid attention to our own breathing. After this, we engaged in more active movement with an assortment of yoga poses the students were already familiar with, along with one new pose: bridge or Setu Bandha Sarvangasana.
After that I introduced them to the art project, which was inspired by Gabriel Orozco's work. Using terracotta earth clay the students formed their own representations of how their hands and their heart are connected. Many of the children created miniature sculptures to represent their families. It was interesting to see what was important to them through their artwork. When the students completed their sculptures I photographed them individually holding the artwork. Here are some of the photographs!
~A special thank-you to Shannah, the art teacher from New City School! I borrowed some of her ideas while developing this project.
