Phoebe Haskell lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and when she was in fourth grade, she struggled with intense anxiety. In middle school, she learned to manage her anxiety through artistic exercise and journaling. The quality of her life slowly improved as she learned self-reflection, and now journaling is her daily habit–she’s filled hundreds of pages with her thoughts, emotions, and details of her life. Although Phoebe has found a way that she processes her emotions, many people in her community struggle with mental health issues. Through her Culminating Leadership Project, “Expression Through Reflection,” she hopes to help children learn how artistic practices can help them process intense emotions.
“Kids are always meant to be innocent, happy, and carefree, but these assumptions and stereotypes about children make us blind to real mental health issues. I want to make a difference that matters.” – Phoebe Haskell
Phoebe began her project by reaching out to potential student volunteers and teachers that could help her provide the classroom space and art materials for her class. It was important to her, in the design of her class, that much of the inspiration came from kids themselves. In search of elementary student input, Phoebe scheduled a meeting with the 5th grade class at her school to listen to them share what class formatting works best for them. This meeting improved Phoebe’s understanding of the extent of the 5th grader’s perspective about mental health and wellness.
Using student input, Phoebe created an activity that activated students’ creativity while also allowing them to reflect on their thoughts and emotions. This led Phoebe to design an emotion-focused Zine project. Zines are self-made, self-published mini-magazines that can be anything from drawings, cutouts, paintings, to poetry. They’re pure expression and artistic exercise, and Phoebe found them perfect for her purpose. Through a school-sanctioned offering of service hours, Phoebe gathered together 7 high school student volunteers and led a zine-making class with the 4th grade at her school.
“Working on this project made me feel really calm while coloring and putting my emotions onto paper” – Anonymous 4th grade student during feedback.
Phoebe had spent hours preparing for the class through meetings with her many volunteers and project design, but only had one hour for her class. In this hour, she planned to give a presentation, implement a project, clean up, and then use the rest of the time for feedback and project reflection. She began the class by asking the students to define the word “wellness.” They then discussed memories and emotions that they felt extremely strongly; happiness, sadness, anger, really whatever emotion they felt inclined to think about and reflect on. They used their reflection on their strong emotions to provide inspiration for their zine projects. Using the supplies that Phoebe was able to borrow from her high school’s art department, every student created their own Zine project and took it home. Judging by the feedback that she received from her students, “emotionally, writing my memories down did help me express myself,” “I will keep using zines at home to help me when I’m in a rough spot,” and “I liked writing because it helped me recognize what feelings I felt,” the project, Expression Through Reflection, was a success.
The impressive positive feedback that Phoebe received about her project from elementary schoolers has inspired her to continue her CLP into her senior year. She hopes to use her experience with her class as well as her student’s feedback to create future lesson plans and establish a free, online wellness resource for students and teachers. She also hopes to continue teaching Wellness classes, and expand her wellness curriculum to other elementary schools, broadening the scope of her project’s reach. Phoebe is incredibly grateful to Mr. Wolfe, Ms. Kerlin, Ms. McConnell, Mrs. Reynolds, Mr. Playe, her wonderful peers and teachers at Alzar, and her supportive student volunteers who helped her make this project possible. Thank you!
