Encourage.

The afternoon at LEAP 4 was a little chaotic today as students scrambled to finish their puppet shows that they were working on with Mike. I had only a few students that did not finish their artwork from yesterday, so I encouraged them to finish with the time they had remaining.

One of the students had a very difficult time with her drawing, and yesterday, had basically given up on it. It struck me as very interesting, because Melissa is not the type of girl you would take for insecure. She is always smiling and dancing and singing. She won the girl's individual talent show last Friday, and today was one of the members of the winning group for the group talent show. She even got on stage and did an impromptu dancing/singing number with a couple of boys [click to see a video of this delightful, spontaneous moment].

But with her art, I could see that she struggled. Even though I don't know exactly what her friends were saying (they speak in like, 10 different languages here), it was clear that her art was becoming the brunt of many jokes and comments.

Yesterday, she'd given up. She'd taken an earlier draft from someone else, had erased the name, and claimed it as her own.

So today, I called her out. I brought to her the artwork that she'd started, and asked her if she wanted to finish it. She was embarrassed when I held up her drawing, and said she had another. Yes, I said, but you didn't draw it. I asked her if she wanted to give up, or if she wanted me to work with her and show her how to save her original piece. She took a moment, and decided to keep going.

Later, we worked together to talk about how to blend the colors, how to use the darker colors to correct her facial structure, and how to save the background (which had gotten messy). I was so proud of her for working through it, and appreciated an opportunity to intervene in someone giving up, even if it was just a drawing.