I have been announcing, recently, mostly to myself: “I am unmotivated. I am really unmotivated.” I attend to a few things and not to many others. I cannot feel what it is that governs my choices – what standard or principle; it may just be fatigue, or disorientation as I anticipate the loosening of winter’s clarifying lock. In the course I am taking, Language Acquisition and Learning in a Linguistically Diverse Society, we are repeatedly cautioned: have high expectations of your (English language learning, non-dominant culture, low socio-economic-status) students. This always depresses me for some reason – probably because I am not sure which high expectations to have, for myself or my students. High expectations are a powerful motivating force, until I feel I have failed to meet them – then I feel unpleasantly scaled down and small.
Last week we spent part of a morning working on our monthly self-portrait drawings. Some children very much enjoy sitting at a table with a mirror and drawing themselves – large faces, stems of hair standing straight up, deliberate, tightly wound circles representing cheeks, barrettes, pirate eye patches, and other important landmarks of identity. Some children hate making these drawings. They try to sit it out, refusing, but I do not let up. I say:
“Oh! Look in the mirror, I can see you. What shape is your face, what do you see?”
I trace the air, emphatically, all along the edge of my own face, reflected there beside my student’s.
“A circle.”
“Ok, will you make a big circle or a little circle? There! What’s next?”
“My eyes.”
“Will you draw very small dot eyes or bigger eyes that can see a lot?”
Very occasionally a worried and resistant child is won over with just that much support. Often it takes more. There’s always a lot going on during the 30 or so minutes during which self-portraits are made. A lively activity is in progress nearby to engage most of the children while a few work on their drawings. Children who draw contentedly make occasional demands for approval of their work. The protests of the rejectionists cannot be ignored. I find the process stressful but worthwhile; I am irrationally attached to it.
Some children enjoy making the drawings but are not inclined or yet able to find a means of representing their appearance. I feel unkind as I gently suggest: “We’re making self portrait drawings today, would you like a new piece of paper and you can draw yourself?” It cannot be said with certainty whether the drawing I am (essentially) rejecting is already themselves – it often appears to be the restless track of a thought – and what can we know of ourselves apart from these, our thoughts. My invitation to begin again (with “and do it RIGHT this time” implied) can startle some children, dismay others.
Ryan made three drawings last week. Weeping through two of them. His first drawing is all mobile impetus. It is a lively drawing; I think that in making it he was absorbed in his own motion, spinning a silken lining through which my expectation could not penetrate. I know he is interested in representation – he tells me about the robots he paints (vast fields of red with some daubs for ‘buttons.’) But today making an image of himself worries him – probably because I am asking him to meet a demand. He may also be worried about the inherent demands of representation (as opposed to purer drawing.) Robots are not part of his day to day existence, they might look any of a number of ways and he feels affirmed by his efforts. I want him to feel affirmed by his efforts to draw his own face, so simply - the rudiments, but he knows his own face very well. Perhaps the rudiments will not do for him.
Ryan goes slack. His shoulders, as they sink, pull his head forward. “I can’t,” he cries, “I can’t. YOU do it. YOU!” I am not automatic in my response. I am unmotivated - not apathetic, rather I am overwhelmed with empathy. I cannot whisk him briskly through. I sit near him, near enough for warmth. “I’ll help you, Ryan. You can do it.” I never have done what I now do: place my hand, red and rough with winter and incessant washings, lightly on his small golden one and barely steer its movement in a trembling circle. It is as if his hand, holding the barrel of a black pen, is a device which translates the blind assurance that would be my drawn line into something vastly vulnerable – as if he were a pantograph producing a shift in open-ness not scale. I scarcely breath, so gently, lightly advancing his hand, yet I feel something aggressive in my pursuit of these self-portrait drawings: the few children who dread them really dread them.
He makes two faces in this second drawing and I cheer him on, with genunine enthusiasm. Ryan is not pleased, though; it may be that the struggle of effort remind him of his frailty – how far he lags below my high expectation? Or maybe he just misses his mother so awfully today, right now. His wobbling circle represents vulnerability, he can only collapse in on the feeling of emptiness. He cannot radiate just now, he cannot feel or plot himself on paper.
We are ready for eyes. “Come, a circle, go down and ALL around,” I say. He makes one. "You need another eye, now." Instead he inscribes a line, intently, north, south, north, south, making a very dark spike. He cries, open mouthed and silent, tears gliding down in lines gently bowed by his cheeks. No sound. What he draws, when he tries, does not (by his own reckoning) represent him adequately. What he draws when he does not try (that first drawing) – that will satisfy him very much. It is hard for me to say when his satisfaction should be given precedence over mine. I want him to begin to filter out the noise of line and find the forms through which his ideas can be shared. But he is a fragile boy, for now, an easy wilter. He and his hand and his mind may not be ready; he doesn’t have to be. For now he can tell me the story of his drawing instead of showing me. But for a few minutes, one morning, each month he will try. Because I say so. He makes another, lovely, eye. The dark spike will be a nose, but he doesn't like this.
Ryan cries, but given the choice to stop he wails, "No!" I rub his back and he reaches round and he rubs mine. Is he used to having a grown up cry when he does? Or is he simply empathic? Later I tell Hanauta this last bit, about him comforting me, in essence, as I comforted him. She asks, “What if he wasn’t cute [he really is] but he was still sweet?” “That would be ok,” I say, “he is so cheerful, and cheering.” She goes on: “What if he was cute and sad but NOT sweet.” I have to think about this. I am easily swayed by beauty. “That would be hard,” I say, “it would be hard to have someone so sad who is not sweet.” By sweet I must mean: responds to and emanates gentleness (as opposed to high expectations?)
We focus together, I tilt his hand's path, a narrow black line unspools, leaving a large circle on the paper. Two eyes are summoned forth (a rising sun, an almond) and a small mango of a nose. I ask, “Ryan, what about your mouth, will you make a happy mouth or a sad one?” Sad,” he sighs, sadly. He sits straighter then, “No, happy,” he says. He makes a bowed line down, up, down, that looks more rueful than joyous – it is wry. Ryan is pleased, there he is, he has done it. Has he been buoyed by my expectation or simply survived it?
I linger, in my thinking, on the pantograph. So often I see my own experience reflected in that of my students – worrying, wondering seeking reassurance, hungry for the refuge of confirmation, struggling to represent and share what interests me. Am I, by means of uncontrollable empathy, a scaled up illustration of their struggles and concerns, or is it the other way round? And what hand guides the line that marks and shapes, that confines our time?
