5: Embodied Sculpted Analysis

To combine my current and my future worlds, I used embodied sculpted analysis to understand Karen culture (and Karen children) through the eyes of my current students. A theatre game technique of mirror play, based on Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed and Games for Actors and Non-actors, provided entry into the images of Karen children for the second grade classes. After going over rules, I assigned partners and students took turns posing like the child in the photo while the other student played photographer with the ipad. We switched roles, then had both students stand in the position for a time of class discussion.

 How does it feel?
When else have you felt like this?
When else has your body been in this pose?
What would the next movement be?


While I found the image of the dancing Karen student to be dynamic, the students were most concerned with how tired their arm felt while freezing in that position. A student compared it to raising their hand and waiting for the teacher. A few students did make comparisons to dancing performances on stage or for cultural festivals. They had a difficult time connecting it to specific memories and spent more time dancing, laughing, and trying to make their classmates laugh than talking about their lives and memories.

After a few minutes of discussion, one student pointed out the "tissue" in the girl's hand which led to further comments about dancing with objects.

The second image, another dance, led to more silliness. The students struggled with directions and were competing for each others' attention. The ipads only served to distract them so I stopped the photographer role. (Later in the week, the students were pretending to play photographer during music class and using the photographer role-play to bully other students.)

To regroup, I bypassed any additional images of dancing and went to a third image that included younger children and a different pose. The students took turns being each actor in the scenario. This image clearly resonated with the students. They told stories of something (literally) being kept just out of their reach. These experiences flirted with the line between fun and frustration. One student made the connection to making a dog behave when feeding them or giving them a treat. Despite the students' ability to relate to the image, they still had a hard time controlling their bodies, their words, and being respectful to everyone.

To calm down and reflect, students worked silently, using a picture to tell me one of the stories they remembered during the day's acting session.

Every student chose to draw about the third scenario. Though they had taken turns acting in both roles, only two students drew a memory as the dominant older child who holds the item just out of reach. The other eight students identified with the smaller child who is striving to attain the object. Four of the memories involve siblings. An only child drew and wrote about an experience with a classmate. The other five memories do not specify the relationship to the other individuals. In three of the images where the artist depicts themselves as the victim, they seem to have crossed out or erased a smiley face on themselves and replaced it with a frown. One student writes "It did feeld hard...To get that! Then I feeled angry." (punctuation their own--no words omitted) There are Korean words emanating from the perpetrator, a creature with horns, angled eyes, and a boar's mouth.

One student finished early and drew a second memory, based on the first image. Her sentence details "when my brother laght at me when I dance."

Based on Tuesday's quasi-disastrous class, I made adjustments for Thursday's students. I was curious to see the results with a different group, wondering if the struggles were due to the individuals or the experience. I had the ipads on hand so that I could have the option for photography but did not start the lesson with the photographer role. I also incorporated additional images. The third image was the last and most recent image shown, which could be part of the reason all the students drew a memory based on it, but they also seemed to have the strongest connection to the scenario. I postulated that this was due to the age of those photographed (younger than the other images) and the interaction between two individuals (not a choreographed dance but kid antics).

So as not to change all the variables for the second teaching group, I started and ended with the same two images. In between, instead of showing one image of three teenage dancers, I showed four images of young children (2-8 years old) interacting in various ways.

The students latched on to the activities and displayed greater levels of self-control. I think this had very little to do with different teacher presentation, as I do not feel I was significantly better at classroom management with the Thursday class. The group, though, was more mellow overall, did not have the distraction of the ipads, and appeared to make a stronger connection to the images. They were very respectful of each other and had to physically connect to another classmate to do three of the poses. I was concerned that this would be an issue but they managed to regain composure quickly, even after lifting each other or standing on a chair. When it came time to sharing with their words, Tuesday's class had retold memories that seemed to be fables, trying to make their classmates laugh and top each others' stories. Thursday's class did not struggle in this regard but shared more reasonable stories.

When it came time to draw a memory, one student's artwork came from the first dancing image. Four students drew riding/rolling/racing experiences based on the third image. One student connected to the fourth image, drawing a sword fight and writing "my friend and me played a fight game with my friend it was fun. I like my friend." Five students drew stories that related to the sixth images (which was the third image on Tuesday). Three of the experiences are negative, with references to crying, "Please! Please! Please!" "No," and taking something away. The other two are neutral or positive, talking about playing a game with a sister or friend.

No students chose to draw about the second image or the fifth image. I found each of these to be compelling. The weight, the struggle, of lifting someone to help them accomplish something--it is beautiful. The students had rich discussion about this image. They said it was hard to be the lifter but it was also scary to be the one lifted, not sure if they were safe or if they would fall. Still, every student said they preferred to be the one lifted rather than the one doing the lifting. I thought, especially as small people in a big world, that they would relate to things out of reach and working together to accomplish a goal. They told stories but did not chose to draw any of these memories.

The fifth image, more aesthetically enticing, is equally if not more compelling for me. While I found the embrace to be comforting, the students thought their classmates arm was heavy on them. They did not find pleasure in having someone wrap their arms around their shoulders. This seemed strange to me as it appears to be a loving, hug-like gesture. Again, no students drew memories from this pose.

In both one-hour lessons, I found that the students (7 and 8 years old) were very literal in their understandings. They did not naturally come to a deeper emotional/symbolic understanding (lonely, loved, supported, etc.). Because they found it physically demanding to hold some of the positions, they made negative connections to situations that appeared pleasant, joyous, and festive. I found that connections to images with multiple young children were significantly easier and were more likely to be the trigger for the memories they chose to draw.

I am still conflicted about how to honor their contributions when the memories are less memory and more fantasy. Particularly in Tuesday's group of silly students, they seemed to be combining the image with their own experiences to create an embellished story. Though my problem statement does include "revision their past," I meant this for children who have suffered from traumatic experiences. I don't want to undermine the life experiences of my current students but "fish stories" to make their classmates laugh are not what I was imagining when I wrote about empowering children to revision their past.

For the next phase, I want to combine memories and visual storytelling. I am still considering how to trigger and document memories and might utilize a timeline or a map in the artmaking process.