Writing, that ability that allows us to leave a mark, write history, talk about someone's public or personal life, is even a means that allows us to express our greatest desires and, why not, our greatest fears.
Writing started humanity, created an era for human beings, it was the means by which our ancestors filled us with history, let us see a part of their lives, of the good and bad things that happened in the past. In addition, it served to create fantasy worlds that are still being created today.
Drawing is also a means of expression, it is perhaps older than writing. Before writing, the children draw pictures, not professional drawings, but "silly ones" that allow them to express how they feel or how they see the people around them.
Writing and drawing together allow a greater scope in our expression, as I mentioned earlier, they allow us to express desires and fears but also how we feel and see the people around us, and this is what this text is about.
Teachers have a special approach to the life of their students, through drawings or writing they can get to know more about children than what they intend to show the world. Carrying out creative writing and drawing workshops allows students to reveal traumas, fear that they have or that have created them, or on the contrary, reveal things such as what they would like to be in the future, who their best friends are or how they feel about the people around him.
It is known that teachers are not always psychologists and that the aforementioned is fixed in the field of psychology, but living with another person for a long time allows reaching a certain degree of knowledge and realizing that something is wrong or suspicious. So as teachers you have to use that vein of psychologists that some have, in order to discover what happens with students and how they can be helped.
There are certain books that can be worked with in order to make students feel closer to writing and drawing. Next we have the books and how they could get to work to achieve the aforementioned objective.
- House of stars. Javier Naranjo. 2005
This book is a rare dictionary, although it does bring the words with their definitions, the definitions found there are not scientific like those in a dictionary. The definitions in this book were written by children, they defined the word according to what they knew and the context in which they were.
- Professor Revillod's Universal Animal Facility. Miguel Murugarren and Revillod. 2004
Animalario is composed of illustrations of animals whose bodies are divided by two lines, which allows new animals to be formed with the parts of those that already exist.
- Style exercises. Raymond Queneau. 1947
Here we find an anecdote told in 99 different ways.
- The book of imaginary beings. Jorge Luis Borges. 1957
Borges introduces us to the world of imaginary beings by writing this encyclopedia of beings that are found around the world and of which we have heard in stories, books and movies.
These four books are very different in their format and content, but all of them allow us to reach children and get them to express themselves and try to express their reality in a fantastic way as it is done in these books.
Casa de las estrellas allows students to define everything they know, according to how they know it and not how they have always been told it is. It is to be expected, if this book is used and this type of exercise is carried out, that we will find students who define family as something bad, dark, full of conflicts and fights or that even means loneliness, or in the opposite way, who define it as support, company, love, etc. Simple exercises like this allow students to translate their reality into letters.
Style exercises allow students to share an anecdote with their classmates and teachers and tell it in different ways, this will allow them to seek to express it in a negative or positive way, according to how they feel at the time of writing it and modify it in different ways. presented by Raymond Queneau, it is important to bear in mind that some of the exercises are very complex, therefore you must first select what type of styles to use according to the age and grade in which the students are.
On the other hand there is the book of imaginary beings. Introducing students to this encyclopedia will show them how a being can be described differently, and will also allow them to identify that there are both good and bad beings and that the characteristics that define them can differentiate them from one another.. Allowing students to take people from real life and give them characteristics like the ones in this book, they will show how they see their friends, family, teachers, etc.
Psychological studies have shown that children tend to capture their traumas in writing or drawings since they do not feel safe telling them to adults because they fear that these adults will also become part of their nightmares. Writing and drawing are shown as the closest they have to expressing their feelings.
In the classroom, you can find drawings that will be seen as sadistic or sexual for a young child to have made, you should try to get to the background of drawings like these to identify what kind of problem the child is going through. child who makes me draw this kind of thing. The same happens with writing, there are teachers who have read texts with stories that if the students are asked only came out of their imagination, but if they are analyzed more carefully, they will find texts where adults are the main characters and in many cases These adults are the bad guys in the story, and then we find another adult that they identify as their savior or as an angel protecting them.
These types of activities allow us to identify things that may be strange in the students' lives, it is important that if this happens, the teacher refers to the parents and, if necessary, to a psychologist in order to support the student. and help them express and perhaps overcome their trauma or come to identify a possible disorder they may have. Likewise, if it is seen that the writings and drawings are very good and express future wishes and that they are achievable, the student should be supported and motivated to continue on that path and do a better job.
If possible, these types of activities should be carried out at least once a month and the work collected in individual folders to further study the change in work performed continuously and even over a period of time longer than just one year if you have the opportunity.
