A "Safe" Space

Today I did some improv exercises with the kids again. One of them involved eye contact. I selected a group of students to stand in the middle of the circle, facing outward toward everyone in the outside circle. I told the students to stand and quietly stare into their partners eyes, without laughing, until I told them to move.

I stood in front of Rumela, and I stared into her eyes. She moved her eyes a bit around the room behind me, before she finally rested her gaze on my forehead. Still, I stared at her.

"Next!"

I repeated the exercise with every kid in the center circle. Unlike Ramela, most of the students looked straight into my eyes, and they didn't laugh or anything. Finally, when we were done, I told everyone to sit down in the chairs. That's when I noticed that a few of the students in the group were crying.

"So, I can see that this exercise has brought up some emotions. You may feel saddened after looking into eachother's eyes, or maybe you feel overwhelmed, or just irritated by the whole exercise. Feel free to say whatever is on your mind."

Silence.

"Now I don't know what kind of social dynamic is going on this room, and I don't pretend to know. But you have my assurance that no comment is too big to bring up here. And if someone makes fun of you, I'll kick them out. I promise."

Still, silence. I stared into the dark sunglasses of one of the girls with an afro. "You can tell me," I said to her.

"I just keep on thinking about my father who died," she said to me.

I thanked her, but I did not press on. Instead, I addressed the rest of the group.

"How did it feel to look into eachother's eyes? Did it feel weird? Scary?" I asked the class. One of the boys was crying, and he put sunglasses on to hide his face.

"You don't have to tell me, and I'll admit I have no idea what kind of social relationships in this classroom have developed. I don't know if y'all are friends, or if you even feel comfortable being yourself in this room. But I want you to be able to express yourself, including the side of yourself you feel embaressed or uncomfortable with."

No one felt comfortable responding. The exercise was too honest, too western, too something, and it had opened them up a little bit too much. I thought this was what I wanted, but when it finally happened, I wished we could all just go back to being kids again, and joke around and do our best impressions of a cab cab. I felt like I'd exposed the little adults in these children, who were dealing with issues way out of their age range.

Stumbling, mumbling, I moved on to the scene workshops, knowing in the back of my mind the entire dynamic in the classroom had changed, perhaps for good.