The experience of Eye to Eye Art Rooms and creatively engaging Mentees in thinking about neurodiversity is very close to my heart. I started in Eye to Eye’s Near-Peer Mentoring Program as a Mentor and Chapter Leader eleven years ago, which set me on a course to pursue professional experiences in teaching and curriculum writing. Three years ago, I joined the staff at Eye to Eye with an interest in improving the mentoring program curriculum that had been so impactful in my pre-college experiences. I’m in my second year writing and designing the Art Room curriculum for Mentees, Mentors, and Chapter Leaders as part of Eye to Eye Mentoring’s two-year curriculum arc. I’d love to share a new art project debuting this upcoming year with our readers!
As any former mentoring program participant can tell you, Eye to Eye’s Art Rooms is more than just art. Each project offers a creative entry point to a more profound skill designed to support young people. I design all of our art projects connected to the Foundations for Young Adult Success Framework (from the University of Chicago), which aligns four foundational components (values, mindsets, knowledge and skills, and self-regulation) and three key factors (agency, integrated identity, and competencies) as an outline for young adult success. We want every Mentoring Program participant to leave the Art Room feeling a deeper connection to their neurodiverse identity– having the knowledge, skills, and agency to accommodate different environments to meet their needs– and with a sense of the goals and mindsets that will lead to their successes. While social and emotional learning concepts are rarely new to our participants, often the strategies and design of learning activities connected to broader social and emotional skills are not designed for neurodivergent students– for whom in particular, replacing a worksheet with a hands-on, gamified activity might have a much higher degree of engagement and meaning.
This year, we’re excited to feature a new project focused on self-regulation– our Self-Regulation Rollers Project. Last year, Mentees and Mentors discussed self-regulation strategies and practiced different strategies using origami “Strategy Tellers” (you might remember them from the playground as fortune tellers). This year, Mentees and Mentors will use a jumbo dice to create a “Self-Regulation Roller.”
As the Art Room begins, Chapter Leaders gather the community to discuss self-regulation using our competency and conversation cards. After introducing the concept of self-regulation– the ability to monitor, understand, and manage your feelings and reactions (like words and behaviors) to things around you– to Mentees, Chapter Leaders and Mentors discuss mindfulness and share examples of strategies that they use as neurodiverse people to self-regulate. After story sharing and a group discussion using prompts from our curriculum guide and Conversation Cards, Mentees and Mentors pair off or work in small groups to identify the best self-regulation strategies for them. As participants discuss self-regulation in different environments, they use words or pictures to add strategies to their jumbo die. When their self-regulation rollers are ready, the gamified practice begins! Mentees and Mentors get into groups to roll their die and practice strategies while troubleshooting silly and serious scenarios that require self-regulation. The art room ends with a short reflection circle, where participants share their die and a new strategy they’re leaving the Art Room equipped with.
We’re excited to see how our communities react to the self-regulation rollers project this fall!
This blog was written by our Director of Curriculum & Program Development, Carly Priest. To learn more about our programs, please sign up for our newsletter.
