It’s Okay to Go Slow

It’s Okay to Go Slow: 

Reflections from Rida 2020

“Empowering, humanizing, deeply moving, doable in the world of 2020 screen time overload!”

— 2020 Rida Participant

Like so much of 2020, the Rida Institute looked and felt different this year. We carried a theme of community care as we ventured to move Rida online. We gathered 24 educators from Detroit and across the country to create a community of support during an uniquely challenging year. The most notable change while moving online was slowing down and spreading the annual intensive retreat across four weekends in the fall instead of one summer weekend. Over those first four months we cared for each other as we managed the challenging beginning and end of the first semester of school during a pandemic.

Reflections from a Facilitation Fellow: 

“As adults we don’t have the luxury to be curious… to stop to ask questions. But real collaboration comes from curiosity ”

— Kiarra, PIE Facilitator

Another major change included hosting our first Rida Facilitation Fellow, Kiarra Ambrose who joined us on the Rida 2020 journey. Kiarra is a Rida alum, educator extraordinaire and Math Training and Support Coordinator at Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD). The goal of the fellowship was to support Rida Institute while investing in and growing the skills of the fellow. After Rida ended, Kiarra reflected that she gained a deeper understanding of humanizing facilitation practices including being more intentional about the ‘what’ and ‘why’, asking powerful questions and prioritizing people being present in the space. Her top lessons include: 

• It’s okay to go slow 

• Less is more 

• Let things unfold by holding space 

• Let people take what they need 

She is bringing her lessons into her work at DPSCD when creating training and development opportunities for math teachers. In particular, PIE’s core practices of connection and somatic centering are now routine in her work in the Math Department. The introduction of these techniques have been impactful and well received among her colleagues. Kiarra has seen more engagement and increased participation with the math teachers she supports. She has received positive feedback from participants who have vocalized appreciation for the shift in the learning environment. Since starting to use these practices, participants have built a stronger sense of community allowing them to be more vulnerable to make mistakes, push each other and change their minds. A radically simple shift continues to have a profound impact within her department. See above for Kiarra’s tips on humanizing adult learning spaces.

Root System Mediation

ROOT SYSTEM MEDIATION:

“I hope to offer this practice for folks to engage with art as a resource for themselves in processing grief and aligning with their humanity when faced with circumstances that ask them to push past it.

Art can serve as a vehicle for fostering a deeper connection with oneself and cultivating the capacity to attend to our needs.”

- Cyrah, Lead Teaching Artist

An Offering to Pause and Process: 

There seems to be a common feeling of depletion and exhaustion. We are over a year into a deadly pandemic while navigating a seemingly endless onslaught of terror; fueling tragedy and trauma around us. It often feels like there is little space to process our emotions and the compounding grief we are experiencing, especially if we are unable to access traditional ways of processing. Our Root System Mediation offering was created by Lead Teaching Artist Cyrah Dardas as an invitation to acknowledge our grief by carefully creating a container and ritual to process our emotions through embodied drawing. 

This drawing mediation intends to bring awareness to hidden root systems. While reflecting, we notice the patterns and networks within all living things around us like wondrous trees. We are reminded of the strength and support within our complex root systems and honor interdependence and interconnection as a way to tap into our innate aliveness and inherent resilience. It is a portal to reconnect us to our shared humanity in a context that continuously asks us to disconnect from ourselves, each other and the natural world.

What Is A Drawing Mediation?

“Meditative drawing has been an important tool for me as an organizer, an educator and frankly just as a human living in this world, to center and regulate myself.
”

— Cyrah

A drawing mediation is a reflective tool for kinetic relaxation. Firstly, it creates space to process emotions in a safe and healthy way. Using art as a process, the practice of drawing mediations focuses on the healing power of drawing while engaging both the mind and body. The goal is not the end product but to reflect, regulate and replenish through the joyful act of creating. The intention is to use it as a practice in which you find new meaning and depth with each engagement. In doing so, we might find new awareness around our inner voice and other voices within us stemming from our ancestral lineages to our social context.

How To Engage: 

Download the drawing prompt here and follow the suggested guided steps.

Steps:

1) PAUSE:

Create a calm, comfortable space.

2) PROCESS:

Envision the root system supporting the tree. Consider:

- What would the roots of the tree look like that support its structure?

- How might the roots beneath the tree mirror the top of the tree?

Using a pen or pencil, draw the root system that you are visualizing beneath the tree.

3) REFLECT:

- What makes up your root system?

- Where does it live inside of you?

- What is its form?

- How has it informed the way you have grown?

- How does it support you?

4) REPEAT:

Continue to make space to come back to this practice.

“ I think about root systems as the things that aren’t so surface about who we are. Yet what everything is built upon. By examining those things you can become more aware of them yourself”

— Cyrah

For More Resources Check Out:

Expression Through Line

Centering Care in the Classroom

It is imperative that we all prioritize care, connection and wellbeing. Join us in bringing this process into your class or learning space.

Expression Through Line  is a wonderful activity to playfully create space to check in on students’ individual and collective wellbeing. Through an approachable medium students use art to process and express their emotions. It is a deceptively simple lesson that helps students name and normalize their emotions while also teaching students how to reflect on what art is trying to invoke.

Bonus: you don't need to be an art teacher to make it happen!

Centering Care with The Boggs School:

“Its wild you can do that with just one line!”

— Boggs student

This lesson was born during our latest AIR partnership. We teamed up with our friends at the James and Grace Lee Boggs School to deliver our media-based programming based on the theme: Community as Care. We embarked on delivering the AIR program virtually as we all navigated uncharted territory surrounded by grief, loneliness and a tumultuous social and political context as COVID reached new heights in the darkness of winter. Lead Teaching Artist, Cyrah Dardas, focused less on “creating” and more on cultivating a virtual space centered on care through the use of art and media. She developed the lesson Expression Through Line to create the space for Boggs students to share their emotions through the use of art and normalize talking about our emotions with each other. As we continue to navigate the collective trauma, change and ongoing grief of the pandemic, we invite you to center care and connection with young people using the Expression Through Line lesson!