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The liveliness of charcoal
The invitation to slow down, notice and pay attention to the liveliness of which charcoal offers and the potential connections to the beloved forest, sparked many thoughts of practicality and curiosity in my self as an educator. Lines began to move rapidly from one place to another, offering the extension of a line from one being to another, waiting for the line of travels to connect to the feet of ones body. Charcoal moved with the bodies in fast pace, with gentle pressure to the paper, slowing down was not offered through the children’s bodies but from the noticing of the marks left behind as the charcoal travelled across the…
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Charcoal proposals & invitations
A Walk in the Forest There was much enthusiasm about the possible interactions with paper and charcoal. Charcoal has been used by artists for a very long time, dating back to 15,000 BC. The children were invited to join these long artistic traditions within many cultures around the world. To set the scene and foreground the importance of charcoal as an art material, we placed large pieces of white paper on the floor and offered children thin willow charcoal sticks. In this initial exploration in the classroom, the children began to understand some of the properties of charcoal: “Charcoal is brittle, fragile and easily breaks when pushed on paper’s surface.…
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The Experience
Lines began to move rapidly from one place to another, offering the extension of a line from one being to another, waiting for the line of travels to connect to the feet of one’s body. Charcoal moved with the bodies in fast pace, with gentle pressure to the paper. Slowing down was not offered through the children’s bodies, but from the noticing of the marks left behind as the charcoal travelled across the paper. Fingers pushed tiny pieces of charcoal, but the creation of dark, thick lines moving from beneath fingers was noticed. How could such a small fragment offer such darkness? Intricate and thoughtful up and down movements with…
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The Beginnings
We would like to propose that together we focus on the arts of slowing down, paying attention, and noticing. hat it might mean for us to support children to notice and slow down when we go to the forest. How might we invite children to slow down rather than “consume” everything they find/see in the forest? How do we invite children to focus, slow down, and notice? If a child picks up a stick, we might become curious about what it is about this particular stick (and not others). Can we stay with what children notice about this stick (and challenge them to think beyond) rather than moving on to…
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Witnessing Ruins of Progress: Recuperating “Staying with the Trouble”
Our pedagogy is guided by a devoted commitment to the aspiration of noticing and the active and ever shifting process of paying attention. We are committed to an aspiration, as opposed to a tangible goal or outcome, because it signals our willingness to engage with the only true constants our world offers us: uncertainty and mutability. In this extended moment of history, our world (the children’s world) is characterized by ecological and economic precarity, one that educational systems too often try to soothe by fostering illusions of stasis and stability. We are committed to bringing this essential instability of our surroundings to the surface of educational encounters with the children.…
