One of my biggest goals as an art educator is to help my students deeply know their lives are important.
I want to show them that healthy and sustainable self-esteem comes from inside oneself, not externally. They will not hear this message from media, their peers, or culture. They will be told that it is always better to be comfortable, and to find comfort—you need to distract yourself, buy more things, or get more likes on social media. To be comfortable is to feel safe in the world.
The problem is, finding our worth in external affirmation is momentary and unsatisfying. Once the distraction is over, the new shiny item is bought, and our posts are a couple of days old, we find ourselves in the same uncomfortable situation, empty again. Yet, we find our quick fix again, and the cycle continues.
The hard part of self-reflection is that peeling back layers of ourselves can be painful and vulnerable. It could be days, weeks, or years to work through the source of our discomfort. I totally understand why people distract their lives away… doing the hard work, is really hard! Everyone is trying to navigate the world in whatever way they know how: healthy or unhealthy. However, on the other side of self-awareness, we can find deep comfort. We can walk through the world internally safe. We can experience the world whole heartedly. But, how do we get there?
Artmaking has been a place where I have learned to spend time with myself. (It sounds simple, but it can be hard!) The year after I graduated college, I remember riding my bike around my neighborhood looking for houses to draw. Even though my life was flipped upside down, I would sit down and draw a house I liked, and something happened inside me. The world stopped spinning, and I felt at peace. Through art, I have been able to slow down and feel safe at the same time. Art has a way of making us present to ourselves.
Art-making also shows us how unique we are from one another. I remember in my college art classes we were assigned the same project and sometimes with the same materials. Yet, every person’s final artwork was extremely different. It was through making art that I found my unique voice. I learned I had something special to contribute to the world.
To me, identity has nothing to do with what your favorite sport is, or what your parents do for a living. Your identity is who you are when no one is looking, the person who sits before your breakfast in the morning. My job as an art educator is to give my students artmaking tools to help them feel safe with that person, to sift through who they are, to feel comfortable in that person’s skin, and to learn to really like who they are beneath all of the “doing.” Then, I hope through sharing their art with others, students see their voice is unique, and most importantly, theirs! I hope the inner confidence they gain from spending time with themselves and sharing their voice in the world, is a springboard to make a huge impact in their communities.
I hope they leave my classroom with more tools to help them navigate the world in a healthy way, the gift art has given me.