Inspire your Heart with Art Day is celebrated on January 31st and was created to celebrate all forms of art and to think about the way art has an effect on our emotions.

• Celebrate your inner artist: Try painting, sewing, sculpting, drawing, dancing, photography!
• Celebrate your artist friends: Share their posts on social media, buy a piece of local art!
• Express your emotions through art: Draw your feelings, dance it out, sing a sad song!

According to a report from the Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago and Ingenuity, social-emotional skills are an integral part of arts education, and arts instruction is a vehicle for addressing SEL in schools. In other words, arts education is an essential part of a child's education. Children and adults can benefit from creating art, and you don't have to be an artist or good at art to do it! It also encourages creative thinking and enhances problem-solving skills.

Below are some resources for SEL and Art:
5 SEL Lessons That Actually Work with Secondary Students
SOCIAL EMOTIONAL AND THERAPEUTIC USE OF ARTS
Social Emotional Learning and the Arts | Institute for Arts Integration

“I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.” -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cornell College, 1962.

Monday was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it’s celebrated as a day on, not a day off, for many people. It’s a day of action and service to achieve King’s dream. Below are resources to help you think about the role race plays in your life and in society, resources for how to be anti-racist, and resources to cope with racial trauma.

Questions to ask ourselves about race:
1. How many people whose race or ethnic identity is different from your own are you friends with?
2. How many people whose race or ethnic identity is different from your own live in your neighborhood?
3. Do you have conversations about race or ethnicity with your friends, family, or with people whose race or ethnic identity is different from your own?
4. What role does power play in determining our cultural spaces?
5. What commitments can you make this year to try to listen to and understand a person or people you fear or don’t know?
6. What commitments can you make this year to actively be anti-racist?

Coping Skills for Racial Trauma:

• Taking part in activism against racial injustice
• Finding a supportive community that understands racial trauma
• Self-care practices (healthful nutrition, exercise, etc.)
• Avoiding relationships, when possible, with people who dismiss the seriousness of racial trauma
  
• Identifying racial trauma triggers and avoiding them during times of intense stress
  
• Going on a limiting media “diet” to avoid images of racial abuse
  
• Identifying racial microaggressions and roleplaying how or when to respond

Coping with Racial Trauma

Ways to Be Anti-Racist:

• Hold your friends and family accountable. 
  
• Attend workshops, events, conferences, and protests that focus on race-related issues. 
  
• Diversify your knowledge and check your information bias. 
  
• Engage in race and ethnicity courses through different departments. 
  
• Have intentional conversations with peers, friends, co-workers, etc. with respect to each other’s boundaries. 
  
• Learn with humility. 
  
• Support the work, art, and businesses of people of color. 
  
• Become involved in organizations that support racial justice issues. 
  
• Avoid usage of stereotypical and normalized, micro-aggressive comments (10-ways to Be Anti-Racist)

10 Keys to Everyday Anti-Racism

In recognition of the trauma caused by yesterday’s violence at the US Capitol and continued unrest we want to provide resources that may help you for your response. 

In Caring for Students in the Wake of a Traumatic News Event, Evie Blad writes about 4 things, we as adults and educators can do right now:

• Identify your own feelings.
  • We have to take time to process our own feelings and understand the effects they have on students’/children's’ emotional stability. Even children who aren’t following the news or are too young to understand, absorb stress from parents and teachers. It’s okay to say “I don’t have the answers."
• Investigate students’ emotions without assumptions. 
  • When Bad Things Happen- Help kids navigate our sometimes-violent world- Includes Psychological First Aid- simple steps to promote healing in the face of community violence
• Provide students a space to share their responses.
  • Adapt for remote instruction
• Seize teachable moments.
  • How to Talk to Kids About Difficult Subjects - How to’s separated by age group
  • Contentious Elections and the Peaceful Transition of Power- eLesson for students from the Bill of Rights Institute

Please know that we are here to support you in any way we can.