Art, for Kids’ Sakes!

For 10 years I taught Art for the Elementary Teacher at a local Christian college. When studying the right and left brain with one of my classes, we did an experiment. I asked them to go into their classrooms and have the lead teacher choose two of the most active children (i.e., disruptive ones). One student teacher prompted an amazing yet disturbing discovery about one little boy’s home life.

I asked the student teacher to put out paper and markers in all the colors of the rainbow. The children could choose any color they wanted. The boy chose a black piece of paper and also a black marker.

Then they were to draw any picture they were thinking of at the moment. This is where the story gets hard to tell and I go to tears every time I share it with someone.

The boy proceeded to draw an outline of his house, two walls, and a roof. Inside the house were his mother and father. His mother was on the floor with her hands over her head. “Please, don’t hit me again!” was written in the mother’s word bubble. The father stood over her with a baseball bat and his word bubble said, “I’ll hit you again and again and again!” Outside of the house on either side stood the boy and his sister, and all you could see were huge tears flowing down the front of their bodies with a huge puddle at their feet.

This story took my breath away when I first heard it and then saw the picture. My heart broke because I just wanted to save the boy and his sister from such a horrible life at home. The lead teacher had no idea this was going on in the home and was then able to figure out why the child was acting out his anger in class.

Art is so very important. It is a release, a response, and a reveal. We can’t end incorporating art in the classroom! So many children need all three of these “R”s to be able to cope today.