Our Nation's Resilience

Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress

Paintings

Teacher’s Guide for Using Painting as a Medium to Develop Resiliency and Convey Hope

Project

This easy-to-implement activity introduces students in middle school and high school to the concept of disaster preparedness in the context of resilience. Through a combination of discussion (see talking points below) and painting, students learn that 1) resilience is the expected outcome of disaster, and; 2) preparedness enhances resilience from the level of an individual to a family and a community to a nation.

Preparedness for terrorism has become a real and necessary part of life in the 21st century. Yet, the topic and the act of preparing is a public education challenge. Leaders at the federal, state and local level seek to promote and sustain preparedness in ways that do not raise undue public anxiety.

This project is designed to engage today’s students who will be tomorrow’s leaders to think of creative ways to educate communities about disaster preparedness.

Objectives

1.	To provide a positive and educational context for students of varying ages to discuss and make meaning of disaster and terrorism, both events that have occurred and are historically significant, and the possibility of such events reoccurring.
2.	To provide a form of expression that can facilitate problem-solving and proactive approaches to dealing with the threat or actuality of disasters and terrorism.
3.	To create images that can be helpful and hopeful for use in community preparedness campaigns in schools, hospitals and the workplace.

Materials

This project can use diverse art materials such as crayons, watercolors and acrylic paints. Some students may prefer a multi-media presentation incorporating other forms of artistic expression including poetry or music.

Presentation of the Project

The discussion component of this phase of the project focuses on understanding the concepts of disaster, preparedness and resilience.

1. Discussion About Disasters Including Terrorism and Bioterrorism

Ask students what they know about disasters. How do they define a disaster? What types of disasters are there? Are there specific locations globally that certain disasters occur with more frequency?

List responses and discuss.

2. Discussion About Preparedness

What is preparedness?

Is it a state of mind?

How does one prepare for various kinds of disasters? How do families prepare? How do communities prepare?

3. Discussion About Resilience

What is resilience? What does it mean to be resilient? How are individuals resilient? How are families and communities resilient? What is a resilient nation? Why is resilience an important concept?

4. Discussion About Preparedness and Resilience

Are preparedness and resilience linked? If so, in what ways? How can being prepared help an individual, family or community recover more quickly? What kinds of images communicate hope and resiliency?

List responses and discuss.

5. Discussion About Art and Expression

Explore how some of the elements of art can be used to convey images of hope and resiliency. For example, what kinds of colors make you think of a sense of hope for the future? Bright colors: Yellows and greens communicating a sense of life and hope? Reds communicating courage, strength and resiliency?

List responses and discuss.

At this point, you may choose to show the students examples of the individual paintings on this website that have been created by other students. Discuss the commentary on each of the paintings. Discuss how each of the paintings conveys a sense of emerging hope and resiliency. Elicit questions from the students regarding specific aspects of the painting that convey hope and resiliency.

6. Creating the Paintings

This phase may actually take several sessions or meeting times.

In the first session, a good amount of time will be spent on eliciting ideas and motivating the students. Part of the initial session will also be devoted to planning and sketching their ideas on paper. Some may actually be ready to start the painting process in this session.

The second session should be devoted entirely to selecting their colors and creating the painting.

7. Linking the Final Paintings Together with Language That Conveys a Sense of Hope and Resiliency in the Images

When the paintings are completed, the final session will be devoted to talking about the paintings and writing commentary for each of the paintings that conveys hope and resiliency to the viewer. This part of the project is very important in the learning process as it allows students to combine language and visual images.

8. Optional Activity: Creation of a Poster Using Some or All of the Paintings Produced by the Students

Ask the students to work together to create several posters using the paintings they have created. Elicit discussion regarding their choices.

Discuss the meaning of working together and how this can help foster resilience in the aftermath of disaster. What is community cohesion and is this important to preparedness and resilience?

Students can work together in deciding a title for each poster.

Depending on the age group, this activity could be expanded to model a community public education campaign. Students could work together to plan how their paintings and commentary could be used by community leaders and crisis planning teams to raise community awareness and promote preparedness for schools, families and neighborhoods.