Creative Journals in a Bottle
What takes place in the minds and hearts of teenagers when at the age of 16/18 they are getting ready to become adults?
What are the challenges that they have to face in order to become an adult, that is being autonomous, self-confident, responsible, able to think outside the box and to learn by experience, kind, optimist and with no fear to admit when you are wrong?
How can educators, both parents and teachers, support them in their journey to adulthood?
In the following chapters you will be able to see a number of creative experiences proposed to teenage students in order to let them reflect on themselves and express some feelings they have inside and that they generally keep for themselves. At home, not many teenagers open up to their parents, telling them about their fears, their deep desires and some of their problems. When they are at school, it is even more unusual for them to have the right situation that allows them to share their inner feelings with others.
The title of this book, Creative Journals in a Bottle, refers to the idea that a message in a bottle can symbolize hope and the human desire for connection. Many of us, when we feel lonely, look for ways to reach out, to connect with someone, anyone. That is where the message in a bottle comes into play.
Many complain that students are not involved in the school subjects, they make an effort to spend time at school and to study what their teachers told them to. It is given for granted that young people should be motivated to study and perform well at school. But it is not so. Without a real motivation inside them, they do things without putting their souls in them. One of the strategies used in some of the following experiences is one based on multisensorial visualization. From their creations at the end of each one of them we can see how they had found something inside that they had no idea to have: a sensitive, original and productive creativity involving the whole of themselves.
In the extracts of the creative Journals teenagers created when stimulated by the right situation and support, they show their potentialities as human beings. Their kindness, their sense of beauty, their responsibility towards themselves, their friends and family, and the world around them.
