"Get your poop in a group!"

My dear friend - fellow artist, musician, and educator, Dr. Chris "Gurney" Goering - said this to me one day as I was bemoaning the state of education, my syllabi, my classroom culture, and my less-than-stellar student performance in a class I was teaching. 

Honestly, it's still on a faded post-it note next to my desk, and I read it often to help motivate and refocus me.

The poop has not been grouped for many years in education, and there is evidence of it everywhere: in legislation, in teacher burnout, in student absenteeism, in high-stakes testing, and in the faces of parents who wonder why their kids would rather disappear into screens than go happily running into the schoolhouse doors with their backpacks bouncing.

So, how do we group the poop? There are obvious answers like "VOTE," but we still have to get up everyday and report to our classrooms. And for some reason, we're only allowed to vote so often at the polls.

How can we help ourselves regroup? I want to share one of my favorite arts integration activities with you and invite you to try it. It involves DRAWING. 

STOP! Don't GO!

You only need to be able to draw circles and lines. You can even print off a stick figure from the internets if you want to.

This stick figure is YOU. The well-grouped YOU.  

Label your stick figure with features that define yourself when you are your best self as a classroom teacher, leader, and colleague. 

Write thought bubbles with your best thoughts in them to keep you going.

Create speech bubbles with things in them that you say on your most stable days.

Add color, line, texture. . . See where this takes you.

Name this teacher/leader if you'd like. It can be your secret (or not so secret) teaching pseudonym.

Put this drawing somewhere you can see and revisit it. This well-grouped teacher/leader will help you remember who you've been at your best and who you want to be, so you can keep your vision in focus the next time somebody turns on a big fan of insanity and the poop threatens to hit it.

By the way, my students love doing these autobiographical stick-sketches, too – and they get pretty darn creative with them!