Circles

This is a set of 4 circles that are designed as creative exercises to be printed on regular sheets of paper, as an invitation for social emotional supportive interactions.  They can be seen as mandalas, which are commonly known circular compositions with a variety of graphic elements that represent a path or a portal.  They are also art pieces, handcrafted by an artist with a digital pen and a drawing style focused on lines and detailed sketching.  And at the same time they are educational tools or toys that encourage trust, in awareness of the multicultural realities involved in public education. 

For me these circles have become the perfect space to integrate creativity and mindfulness as a way to offer social emotional support to many of my students and even myself, while I continue to develop my practice as a culturally responsive educator.  Each circle or portal is dedicated to a particular part of ourselves, with the titles Trust Your Mind, Trust Your Body, Trust Your Emotions and Trust Your Spirit, which are also the names of each lesson plan with tips and instructions to work with them, that you will find further on. 

  • Trust Your Body
  • Trust Your Emotions
  • Trust Your Mind
  • Trust Your Spirit
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We live at a time in public education where social emotional support is recognized as something increasingly needed, but offered in limited and increasingly standardized ways.  The good news is that there are significant achievements in understanding the development of emotions and social skills in academic environments as a crucial part of education, pushing for a structural shift from a punitive discipline model to a more holistic approach of reflection and self regulation.  The challenging news is that social emotional support is offered as a commodity or an extra benefit towards academic improvement, not as a basic need or as something independently meaningful.  This limits the budgets and outcomes but especially standardizes the idea of social emotional health and the ways in which the support is provided, missing the flexibility to transform by not recognizing the multicultural needs and opportunities from the real communities that it is trying to serve. 

It is a difficult ocean to navigate and there are no quick solutions, but some possibilities for growth and an alternative pathway for wellbeing can be found in Creative and Mindful Education.  

Creative education can be understood as the involvement of art, design and playful thinking in any academic setting.  It’s becoming a regular ground for the development of social emotional skills because of its richness in materials and images, and mainly due to its level of interaction between inner-self and outer-self elements.  Mindful Education is a field where social emotional support has been growing very strongly in public education with very significant shifts, offering a variety of resources based on a deeper awareness of the mind, the body and the emotions for students, teachers, staff and families.

Both of these approaches show great potential for the implementation and development of social emotional support particularly in public education.  However, in order to not minimize them towards one simplified community or dominant population, it is important to ground them in a multicultural way, understanding language and cultural barriers that define the way that help is needed and should be provided.  This means that beyond all the great translations and interpretations that can be offered in different languages, it is crucial to open up the idea of social emotional well being so that a diversity of notions and real cultural needs are actively configuring every creative and mindful practice.  

The invitation here is to embrace creativity and mindfulness as some of the richest approaches to move from a universal sense of social emotional wellbeing, towards an awareness of a universe of multicultural ways of being well. An awareness where we see that the main support is not to be a part of a dominant health culture but to feel that every way of healing is worthy of attention and respect.

Portals of trust

My experience as an art educator in Colombia and in the USA has shown me that whenever there is an academic environment with a strong social emotional support, the chances for knowledge and happiness to grow and thrive are simply higher.  And in the heart of these support systems there is usually a special attention to the idea and the practice of trust.  Trust works as the glue or the fuel that keeps everything connected and flowing.  It is better when it gathers different levels, from the students and teachers to the parents and administration staff, and when it is built in particular ways, from public announcements to the way people offer and ask for support.

That is why the main intention in Portals of Trust is to understand trust as a pillar for social emotional development and offer an easy but meaningful way to open a connection with it, encouraging the emergence of trust between teachers and students, students and other students and even each person with themselves.  I believe that trust is a social emotional resource that lives inside and outside of us, and that it presents in diverse ways according to the culture that we come from. These Portals of Trust are designed to initiate an experience of self trust as much as an experience of giving, sharing or asking for trust between different people, with a particular invitation to recognize our multicultural realities in emotions and social development. 

Also as an educator I know that “not enough time” and “not enough budget” are very real and frustrating limitations.  So as I try to make these mandalas easy to print and useful at any given time of a school day,  my efforts go towards concentrating and simplifying high quality ingredients like creativity, mindfulness and multicultural health in each of these black and white circles that anyone can use and make their own, in general hoping to bring more access and less stress for all.  

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Situation: this mandala is designed to be used as a way of decompressing a stressful situation, especially an academically overwhelming situation for a student, a teacher or between a student and a teacher. 

Creative tip: color it from the outside in, using colors that feel relaxing and naturally calming.

Mindfulness tip: Take a deep breath at the beginning of the exercise and bring attention to the colors, not to any particular thoughts.  Take another deep breath at the end of the exercise and find a moment to enjoy the result. 

Culturally responsive tip: as you dedicate this moment to find your calmness, take a look at the way calmness is spelled in different languages and wonder about the different ways of being calm.

How do we open a moment of calmness for multicultural students and teachers?

To open a creative moment that calms the mind in awareness of multicultural differences.

  1. Mandala: a geometric configuration of symbols. (Wikipedia)

Mandala: una configuración geométrica de símbolos.

  1. Mindfulness: is the basic human ability to be fully present. (Wikipedia)

Conciencia plena: es la habilidad humana básica de estar completamente presente.

  1. Multicultural: relating or constituting several cultural or ethnic groups within a society. (Oxford Languages)

Multicultural: que se refiere o constituye varios grupos étnicos o culturales dentro de una sociedad.

In general, the idea would be to find an appropriate translation for these words in every needed language.

The Trust Your Mind mandala is a coloring exercise.  Print the file on a letter size sheet of paper and color with markers, color pens or pencils.  The main invitation is to color it from the outside in, so that it involves a centering dynamic towards calmness.  Focus on crafting and avoid talking or reflecting during the process, but when finalized you might ask ¿what is on your mind now?

Trust Your Mind
    • The Way of Mindful Education.  Rechtschaffen, Daniel.  Norton books in education.  2014.
    • The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth.  Chappell, Sharon Verner and Faltis, Christian J.  Routledge.  2013.
    • Between Us.  Mesquita, Batja.  Norton.  2022.

    Situation: this mandala is designed as a way to recognize and explore an emotional situation, especially when emotions are being expressed in a strong way or not being expressed at all by students, teachers or between students and teachers.

    Creative tip: emotions can be colored with different colors or different intensities of the same colors.

    Mindfulness tip: take a deep breath at the beginning of the exercise and ask ¿what am I feeling? or ¿how do these emotions feel?

    Culturally responsive tip: notice the empty shapes in the mandala and try to put in them some emotions that are very particular to each person, family, community or culture.

    ¿How can students and teachers recognize their particular emotions in a culturally responsive way?

    To open a creative space for emotional literacy in awareness of cultural differences.

    1. Emotions: a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood or relationships with others. (Oxford Languages)

    Emociones: un estado mental, natural e instintivo que se deriva de una situación, ánimo o relación entre sujetos.

    1. Mindfulness: is the basic human ability to be fully present. (Wikipedia)

    Conciencia plena: es la habilidad humana básica de estar completamente presente.

    1. Multicultural: relating or constituting several cultural or ethnic groups within a society. (Oxford Languages)

    Multicultural: que se refiere o constituye varios grupos étnicos o culturales dentro de una sociedad.

    In general, the idea would be to find an appropriate translation for these words in every needed language.

    The Trust Your Emotions mandala is mainly a coloring exercise that can be developed in two similar ways.  One, by coloring each emotion with the color that feels best to each person.  Or two, by coloring the most recently frequent emotions in one color, and the emotions that each person would like to have in another color.  

    This is also an emotional literacy exercise, so just acknowledging the more than 30 emotions included in this circle is already a good way to open emotional awareness.  Markers or color pencils are best for this exercise.

    Trust Your Emotions
    • The Way of Mindful Education.  Rechtschaffen, Daniel.  Norton books in education.  2014.
    • The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth.  Chappell, Sharon Verner and Faltis, Christian J.  Routledge.  2013.
    • Between Us.  Mesquita, Batja.  Norton.  2022.

    Situation: this mandala is designed as a way of centering or grounding attention towards the spirit of things (this also means the center or the heart of things) in situations when a student or a teacher feels lost or isolated. 

    Creative tip: draw a line on all the possible paths, not just the ones that go to the center (home).

    Mindfulness tip: take a deep breath at the beginning of the exercise and bring attention to this mantra: find your path, trust your spirit.

    Culturally responsive tip: look for translations in any needed language of the three words inside of the mandala: search, explore, find.

    ¿How can bilingual/bicultural students and teachers recognize their spiritual intuitions in an academic environment?

    To communicate a sense of worthiness and appreciation for spiritual intuitions coming from bilingual/bicultural students and teachers.

    1. Mandala: a geometric configuration of symbols. (Wikipedia)

    Mandala: una configuración geométrica de símbolos.

    1. Multicultural: relating or constituting several cultural or ethnic groups within a society. (Oxford Languages)

    Multicultural: que se refiere o constituye varios grupos étnicos o culturales dentro de una sociedad.

    1. Intuition: the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. (Wikipedia) 

    Intuición: la habilidad de adquirir conocimiento sin recurrir al razonamiento consciente. 

    In general, the idea would be to find an appropriate translation for these words in every needed language.

    The Trust your Spirit mandala is a maze exercise that can also be a coloring page.  Print the file on a letter size sheet of paper and find the way home through the different paths, drawing a line with pens, pencils or markers.  After finding home try to color parts of the mandala that are particularly interesting to you.

    Trust Your Spirit
    • The Way of Mindful Education.  Rechtschaffen, Daniel.  Norton books in education.  2014.
    • The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth.  Chappell, Sharon Verner and Faltis, Christian J.  Routledge.  2013.
    • Between Us.  Mesquita, Batja.  Norton.  2022.

    Teacher Tips

    Situation: this mandala is designed as a way to open self trust in situations of physical discomfort or anxiety for students, teachers or between students and teachers.

    Creative tip: explore different ways of drawing that involve the body in a particularly uncommon way, like holding the pencil with your mouth, feet or toes.

    Mindfulness tip: take a deep breath before starting to work on each section of the mandala, and as you breathe out let go of any natural tension in the body.

    Culturally responsive tip: each person could color the body figure in the middle with the colors that they feel inside of their own bodies

    Essential Question

    ¿How can students and teachers open creative awareness of their body to cultivate self trust?

    Objectives

    To cultivate self trust in students and teachers through a creative exercise with the body.

    Key Vocabulary

    1. Mandala: a geometric configuration of symbols. (Wikipedia)

    Mandala: una configuración geométrica de símbolos.

    1. Awareness: is the state of being aware of something. (Wikipedia)

    Conciencia: es el estado de ser consciente de algo. 

    1. Creativity: is a phenomena whereby something new and valuable is formed. (Wikipedia)

    Creatividad: es el fenómeno donde algo nuevo y valioso se forma.

    In general, the idea would be to find an appropriate translation for these words in every needed language.

    Context, Activities, and Exercises

    The Trust your body mandala is an interactive exercise that involves four particular ways of drawing.  Print the file on a letter size sheet of paper and use any drawing tools that you find appropriate.  This exercise is divided into four sections.  Section I is to be filed in the fastest way possible.  Section II is to be filed with eyes closed and trying to stay in the delimited area, at any pace.  Section III is to be filed with the non dominant hand (if you are right handed use your left hand).  And section IV is to be filed in the slowest and most detailed way possible.

    At the end find a meaningful space to display the drawings and gather any opinions or reflections about the experience.

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Trust-your-body-767x1024.png
    Trust Your Body

    Citations and Recommended Reading

    • The Way of Mindful Education.  Rechtschaffen, Daniel.  Norton books in education.  2014.
    • The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth.  Chappell, Sharon Verner and Faltis, Christian J.  Routledge.  2013.
    • Between Us.  Mesquita, Batja.  Norton.  2022.
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