4: Layered Analysis

It’s slow going

Some pictures are a year or two old
Pictures and names
We only know Mary’s name

It broke down whatever barriers were keeping our kids embarrassed about themselves and created a way to interact without a lot of words

To be a kid and play with her friends

Art…(is) a venue I love when it comes to building relationships and goes deep into my soul.

Crafts seemed to be received well thanks to lots of energy and sharing

Playing with the youngest ones during the school day and helping with homework, activities, and English learning with the older ones afterschool.

Specific role would be at Blessed Homes

Worked on the mural that went up in the cafeteria room

More painting at Esther’s house

Super gross, but is starting to look a little bit better. I think once we paint it, it will be a respectable home for a small family.

Safe house
Fullness of life
Just full of love
Loving
Loving others together

If loving people is a skill acquired through training, then these kids haven’t had the model to learn from or don’t have the hope to practice the unprofitable skill. Even the orphans at several of the homes we have visited have the advantage of growing up in a caring community.

Deepen relationships for the transition

Calming fears, removing what I perceive as obstacles, and using old and new relationships to encourage me along the journey.

Walk together in relationship
Come alongside people
Continue developing relationships with others in the area
Cooperation from a prominent Muslim in the community

Karen people are still not welcome in Burma
The ceasefire is not doing much to ease racial tension between Burmese and the Karen people.

This is likely his future too
And were they willing?
Weird split in the recent past
Jobs little better than slave labor
Feeling a little useless

The road, access road, great opportunity

Beautiful (dirt) access road to this land for the new youth center

Empowering them to be more effective
Confident with themselves
To be free and full to overflow in service
Admirable…finding their strengths
With big ideas

To change people, and make them into so much more than themselves
Sometimes (change happens) with beautiful and exciting things, like volleyball in the jungle

Forever impacted by their time here

We got good and messy today
Really beautiful time with them
The beauty and the bitterness

The whole event is really beautiful and special, then Danielle pulled out a heap of glow sticks to make the whole thing even cooler.

So here I am, finishing the school year and headed back to Blessed Homes

_____


I’m struggling to code. To relate it to the theoretical lens of the research question.

My data – It is limited. I am planning for the future. That sounds normal. But I am planning for a project in a place where I am not. Not yet. For a job that is not my job. Not yet. Where my knowledge is limited. My experience bound by a mere 24 days over the past 13 months. Plus a few more in the surrounding community for a total of just over a month spent along the Thai-Burma border.

Conversations. Journaling. Interviews. Observations. I have nothing fresh. I went back to my three visits and found the newsletters from those times. I hoped they would suffice.

There is something authentic about analyzing a document made for a different purpose. They weren’t written with this question in mind. The first set was written by our trip leader – my friend and colleague. The second two sets are my own writing, but they are snippets. They are silly and sad and seasoned with my faith. They are a call to my friends and my family around the world to join me in spirit and in prayer for these children. My children.

The newsletters tell the stories of the previous three visits but they don’t speak directly to empowerment through artmaking. Art was a part of each visit, but not necessarily the focus of the documentation.

I went through the newsletters, 21 of them, searching for any reference to this people group, to their plight, to empowerment and art, to a revision of the past, an exploration of who they are, an understanding of others, and a future life together. The pieces are fragmented. Some phrases are taken out of context, or refer to the context of empowerment through sports. A worthy vehicle for change, but not the primary language I hope to be speaking, and not the focus of this action research.

I don’t have a code. A set of symbols or distinct categories. I have a thread. I strung the words together, wove a story from the newsletters, and told a future tale – one I hope to live out starting in August and through action research next spring.

It’s a first attempt, a practice in layered analysis, but I don’t think it is the right data to be analyzing for this question. That data does not yet exist. I will write and rewrite this data.

____


It’s slow going
Pictures and names
Creating a way to interact without a lot of words
Creating as a way to interact without a lot of words
To be a kid and play with friends

Mural, more painting, starting to look a little bit better
I think once we paint it, it will be a respectable home for a small family.

Safe house
Fullness of life
Just full of love
Loving others together

The advantage of growing up in a caring community.

Deepen relationships for the transition
Come alongside people
Continue developing relationships with others in the area

Cooperation from the community

Karen people are still not welcome in Burma
The ceasefire is not doing much to ease racial tension between Burmese and the Karen people
This is likely his future, if we are willing.

The road, beautiful (dirt) access road to opportunity

Empowering them to be more effective
Confident with themselves
To be free and full to overflow in service
Finding their strengths

Sometimes (change happens) with beautiful things
Forever impacted

Let beauty emerge instead of bitterness

____


Trauma
Disrupt
Empower

As I try to process, to envision a future, to go deeper, I wrote disrupt. But their life has already been disrupted; they live in an orphanage. Is it traumatic? I don’t want to write trauma on their life. It is tragic to me, but some have seen such love, know so little of anything before, and might not identify as a victim. Do they know a different way of life?

Regardless of their past, the goal of the project is to empower them to use artmaking as a way to revision whatever past they know, value who they are, understand each other, and create a new future story together.

It is individual and collective.
To write and rewrite, revise and cowrite.

As I research arts-imagination and arts-empowerment, especially in a community, murals are the natural outlet. Yet an emerging idea, perhaps a component to the study, would be a visual journal. There is ownership in a journal. Not loose leaf paper, to be easily discarded. A solid book. Hardcover. To write your name on the front and write yourself on the pages. Pages full of possibility.  Empowered to make decisions in the safety of your book.

An article by Cathy Malchiodi, about trauma-informed expressive arts therapy, mentions that this approach considers:

• an emphasis on cultural sensitivity and empowerment
• helping to move individuals from being not only survivors, but ultimately to becoming "thrivers" through skill building, support networks, and resilience enhancement (Malchiodi, 2011)

I find words of significance later in the article, listing five components of trauma-informed expressive arts therapy.

• Reinforces a sense of safety through reconnection with positive attachment and self-soothing.
• Builds strengths by using the arts to normalize and enhance resilience.

Enhance resilience, with cultural sensitivity and empowerment.  Expressive arts therapy does this.  Empower these children to use artmaking as a way to revision their past, value who they are, understand each other, and create a new future story together.

Confident in themselves.

Growing up in a caring community.

Creating as a way to create a future for Burma.

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4: Layered Analysis (Mary Elizabeth Meier)

Using Mary Elizabeth Meier’s posed questions, I went through the story constellation excerpts, noting documentation and shifts. While there are a few instances in shifts of how to use a particular item, such as a document camera, nearly every instance of shifts as a teacher relate to their approach to teaching. I subdivided these into shifts in the physical classroom, shifts in the lesson plans/course content, shifts in student expectations, and shifts in what their role as teacher should be. These shifts are tied to a greater shift in values and priorities in the art room, moving from teaching techniques to teaching dispositions.

The inquiry method, and comfort level with uncertainty, seemed to be driving both the discussion group and many of the changes in the classrooms. I circled each instance of uncertainty and marked the margin with a large question mark. Some examples are below:

Because I never knew where classroom I would be in that day (7)
Next year I will be even more uncertain because I am changing grade levels (8)
I feel like I am questioning myself about that (13)
This time was a little easier because I wasn’t alone, there were seven other people all searching for the answer to the same question (20)
Open response of inquiry and student led process (21)
It is not a clear line, but one that is full of possibilities (22)

Though some teachers specifically note their initial uneasiness with the format of the collaborative inquiry group and whether it would be effective, they have infused questioning into their classroom practice and are continuing to ask questions of themselves to refine their teaching. “What happened to me this year is what I am trying to do for my kids too” (9). They have seen, first hand, how their role as a learner is transformed through documented inquiry and are now finding ways to recreate this for their students.

The loosening of the parameters was initially unsettling, even scary, as they seemed to be losing control; there was no longer an example of the end product. At the same time, using the document camera to trace gave students confidence to explore even if it meant ruining the work because they could start again. The shifts in teacher approach were then seen in student behaviors as they sensed the freedom and took ownership of their artmaking, whether in secondary non-traditional materials, choosing to collaborate in sculptures, or drawing from other sources to inform their subject matter.

It is interesting how removing or reworking physical barriers and restrictions opens the mind for more possibilities. This is seen in the use of the document camera by the students, but it is also seen in the teachers who are reworking their classrooms, repurposing custodial equipment, and reinventing shared spaces to allow for inquiry. When the felt limitations are no longer an obstacle, no longer impeding their potential. I want to re-examine the excerpts to see both physical and mental removal of barriers and self-imposed limitations on what can be.

(I have recently been exploring self-imposed limitations and the freedom that comes when these barriers are identified and removed. It’s not surprising to me that in trying to understand the coding, through prose, I am drawn to this level of understanding.)

In this next layer of coding, I found more than 15 references to physical removal of barriers, more than 10 instances of mental removal of limitations, and at least three instances where it was impossible to code as one or the other. In those cases, the physical change directly removed mental barriers for the teacher or students. As noted earlier, using the document camera physically allows for restarting a project in a timely manner but it also removes the mental limitations on the students, giving them freedom to take risks, even if it will mean restarting. At the elementary level, the physical change of access to materials, such as the sculpture studio, removed the mental barrier of independent work, freeing students to work collaboratively. Then in another situation, the inability to overcome physical barriers (art on a cart) is still a major mental road-block to implementing centers.

While the recorded conversations were rich in discussion of physical and mental barriers, the blog posts supplied did not directly reflect the same ideas. Inquiry is discussed, though, and could be seen as a way to push through natural mental limitations. The use of open-ended questions, with students, with peers, and with themselves, expands possibilities. If possibilities were not seen as legitimate options previously, the questioning must be breaking through hidden barriers and invisible restrictions, even when participants have not directly stated from what they were shifting.

MENTAL – I don’t understand how this group will work/don’t understand inquiry
PHYSICAL – I am given these tools
MENTAL – I only understand one way to use these tools
MENTAL – I start to understand the inquiry process and how to use with students
MENTAL – I understand a new way to use these tools
PHYSICAL – I use these tools differently with my students
PHYSICAL – I design my lessons differently
PHYSICAL/MENTAL – My students have new opportunities and freedom
PHYSICAL – I don’t have a venue for thoughtful discussion and development with peers
PHYSICAL – I can use skype
MENTAL – I have new things to think about and I find value in searching out with these other people

I see two parallel lines of impact. Following one stream, I see the participants removing barriers for personal growth as an educator. Though all recorded comments show an initial uneasiness with the CIG, participants have been able to overcome years of mental and physical barriers to professional development through the CIG. After this first year, they place a high value on inquiry, documentation, and reflection, expressing a desire to continue as a group into the next school year. Though their colleagues don’t understand the format and resist “talking shop,” the CIG participants are now looking at ways to continue interactions when time and space will physically limit them (such as a group Skype during school-required in-service days).

The concurrent line of change comes about in the classroom. The participants are given technology and exposed to the inquiry method. At first, understanding is shallow and use of the tools is limited. As the year progresses, the participants learn new ways to use the tools and deepen their understanding of inquiry. The more the participants see the results of inquiry in the CIG, the more they value and infuse the process into their classroom. They replicate their experience for their students. “What happened to me this year is what I am trying to do for my kids too.” Rachel (9)

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