Have you ever wanted to do a project, but there was something preventing you from getting started? Maybe you desired to create something crafty, like a birdhouse. Perhaps you were interested in starting a remodeling project on your own home!
Of course lack of funds or ignorance in the area of woodworking could hold you back, but how many times is it really our own inner dialogue that keeps us captive? As I prepare to start my gifted students down the road of writing a novel, I had the idea to clear their paths of mental blocks right out of the gate. Instead of witnessing my students being tortured by inner demons telling them they’re not good enough, “You’re too young,” “You don’t have any good ideas,” and the like, I decided to preempt these messages with a little mini lesson about fear.
The first thing I did was I had my 5th grade gifted students brainstorm things that frightened them. We discussed ideas like dying and scary people breaking into their homes. Clowns and aliens (the outer space kind) were mentioned.
Whenever a student presented something that they were scared of, I had them dig deeper. “What is scary about death? Everyone and everything experiences it.” These ideas gave them pause. We talked about the idea of not wanting to feel pain. Also, there is the whole unknown-ness of it! One student professed that if only he could go wherever you go after death and then come back, he would feel better about it. Wouldn’t we all!
That idea reminds me of a fun Kurt Vonnegut book; one of his last. In “Timequake” (1997) Vonnegut has his favorite character, Kilgore Trout, repeat a large portion of his life after there is a “timequake” which brings all of existence back in time from 2001 to 1991. Kilgore dies in 2001, and he knows it. Because of this he is afraid of nothing. He knows that there isn’t anything that can hurt him. It’s a mind-bending book exploring free will and determinism. I highly recommend it (too grownups).
Without mentioning Vonnegut by name, I discussed some of these ideas with my 5th grade gifted students. We also talked about “why” someone breaking into your home was so scary. “Your home is the most secure place in your entire life,” I suggested. “The intrusion of a person intent on causing harm introduces more than just fear of losing valuable possessions. It would be a violation of privacy, the destruction of the mental constructs of security one builds up around your place of residency. If your home is not safe, what is???”
Clowns. Why are clowns so scary? They have that painted on smile, but we all know that no person can be happy all of the time. Also, it is so hyperbolic that it appears grotesque. The idea that someone could be feeling something completely different under such an absurdly happy look is disconcerting; creepy!
Perhaps the laughing clown is a metaphor for being “laughed at.” To be mocked or ridiculed is frightening.
After our mini discussion about things that scare us, I instructed my students to make a work of art that displayed something that scared them. I was sure to inform them, “This is not meant to be beautiful. It isn’t for display, and no one is ever going to see it.” I wanted them to let go of their imaginations. Capture their fear on paper. They worked uninterrupted for several minutes.
Then, I got everyone’s attention and explained the project further. “What you are making is a monster.” I paused, so that students could reimagine what they had been working on.
I tacked my talk. “Right after winter break I had planned on us beginning to write our novels,” I informed my 5th grade gifted students. “As I was looking through lesson plans that Mrs. Dweck (my predecessor) had used in the past, I found a Google document that was 116 pages long that she had shared with novel-writers. Mrs. Dweck would share this doc through the Google classroom, so each student would get his or her own copy of it. They had to read it, and add information to it. Mentors would comb through the document, finding and commenting on your work.
“One hundred and sixteen pages.
“I was afraid this was too much, too long, too independent… I was scared.” The looks on my students’ faces were fearful. What is about to happen? They were wondering. Teachers aren’t supposed to be scared!
“You might be scared, also. Maybe you are afraid this project will be too much work for you. You could very well worry that you won’t have anything good to write. It is common to feel insecure about the quality of your writing. And then, there is this dungeon; a pit of despair; that writers fall into called Writer’s Block… That can be a looming fear, even when you aren’t trapped by it.”
I took a breath and waited for the fears to quiet down. “What we are going to do is take these fears; these monsters of doubt, hesitation, worry, insecurity; and, we are going to lock them away. I am going to give you a few more minutes to add to your artwork, and then I’m going to collect them. I’m going to put them into a locked cabinet. This cabinet is locked with a key. I am going to take the key and file it down, so that the points are no longer available for unlocking. Your monsters of fear will be trapped in there forever!”
The students enjoyed drawing, coloring; some even added paint to their creations. A student who hadn’t drawn anything talked about simply stabbing the middle of his paper with a pencil. I spoke over the din of the room and explained, “These monsters are symbols. An empty piece of paper is actually ingenious because it symbolizes not having anything to say!”
I had been working on my own artwork, while the students created. I had them guess what my fear was. I had taken a piece of every color of construction paper from a box of scrap papers and bunched them into balls. Then I taped them all together to make a sphere. Next, I tore a hole in the middle of the same kind of paper that my students were using. I folded the triangles of the hole in. I used yellow paint to make lines that traveled from the opening in the center to the outer perimeter of my paper. Without waiting for the yellow to dry, I used black to fill in the space between each yellow line. I used black construction paper to hold my colorful construction paper ball in place, at the center of my hole. The black construction paper was stapled to the painted paper, and my creation was complete.
I asked my students what they thought it was. Not only did they understand that it was a black hole, but they knew that the colorful construction paper was matter being sucked into it. I explained to them that adults have so many different responsibilities that suck our attention and time away. “I am afraid I won’t have what I need to be able to write. I am continually protecting my writing time and wrestling mental thought away from the pull of the black hole of life,” I told them. “I frequently find good ideas escaping me.” I pointed to one of the colors in the center of my artwork. “That right there was a great story idea. I thought of it this morning, while I was on crosswalk duty. Now, it’s gone! It got sucked into the black hole of the bell ringing, my reentering the school, coming up here, getting out the supplies for this lesson… All gone!” I made a grown, illustrating the pain of loss of that great idea that will never be remembered. So dramatic:)
“It’s time. Bring your scary creations over here. Mine is joining yours.” I led them over to a filing cabinet that I had recently cleaned out. We placed our artwork into the bottom drawer. They were really into discussing how it would be locked and what would happen to the key.
Now that our fears have been locked up, we can be free to create. When a student tells me that he doesn’t know what to write, I can tell him that he is listening to the monster that we locked up. “Don’t. It isn’t true. You have tons of things to say. They might not all be just right or work with your story, and that is okay. Just get something into text. Don’t worry about what it sounds like, how much sense it makes, or whether it even fits. You may or may not keep and use it. You will probably need to fill in some details to make it work. That’s okay. What isn’t okay is entertaining that fear. Don’t give your monster audience. Ignore it and write; Write about being afraid of not having anything to write! But, write.”
The Captain of Class 