Sand Art with Hands – Narrative through Art

The short video clip this morning made me think about so many things as a person and educator:

the power of creativity,

the power of simplicity,

the power of non-print text,

 the power of music and how not having it present changes everything,

 how fleeting life and our man-made constructs truly are,

 and how a single grain of sand is lost when it touches others …

…kind of how a child is often viewed. Alone, we can more easily recognize an individual’s talents, strengths, and weaknesses, but placed in a crowd or a classroom, often one’s uniqueness melts and becomes  lost. How do we foster building upon strengths and interests so that they become passions? How do we promote learning in different ways through different media during a time of educational reform in which a number is extrapolated from a single test of reading and writing and may change not only the trajectory of the individual student learner,  but also that of his or her teacher’s professional career?

Sand Art with Hands also made me reflect on current and former Iraqi, Afghani, Bosnian and Kosovar refugee families over the years and how the same narrative is retold decade after decade, century after century.  Do people and the governments that represent them ever learn from the past? What is our world going to look like with billions more people and scarcer resources available? How could this story become many of our stories in the future? And, how do we place value on the single grain of sand when realistically, it is all of us collectively that will shape our future narrative picture?

J. Wheeler-Ballestas