Crafting & me & them

Promoting Good Practice
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I love to craft, mostly with wool. Am I an expert? Nope! However, I do find it very enjoyable and a great method of stress relief. This is something I love to share with the pupils I teach.  I run crafting clubs, introduce crafting challenges and I am working on a felting charitable project. My goal this year is to get more student involvement.I just want to be clear I have no interest in forcing pupils to craft, this is not my aim. However, I so often hear, from pupils, that they can not do these activities because of their heavy academic workload and I see these very same pupils looking completely stressed out. I know that reducing that stress is more than just learning to switch off, we need to reduce their daily workload, especially expectations outside of normal school hours. What I would like to facilitate is some time to completely switch off , mindfulness time, and I think crafting is the perfect activity for this.

"...crafting has positive impacts on our mental and eventually our physical health. When we are creative, our brain releases a feel-good hormone, dopamine, it improves your mood and is a sure way of bringing you tranquillity." CraftMaker

I guess now I need to come up with some ideas. This is what I already do:Activity OneI run a one hour, after school, crafting/creative session. They can create anything they want, using whatever materials they want. I only have a small group, however they have big hearts. Over the past year they have learnt how to crochet and decided they wanted to #yarnbomb the school. They had so much fun doing this and keeping it quiet, so no-one knew it was going to happen. The response was amazing, with the staff and students enjoying the knitted door handles and decorated stairs. Some of the items have disappeared which is perfect, the art is now in a public space and we no longer have any ownership.

Activity TwoI mentor a group of pupils through the IB CAS programme. There were times when they were very stressed. We discussed creativity and how we could show this. We then had an idea, why not use some CAS time to knit and crochet for different projects. They have knitted hats for the Innocent Smoothies "Big Knit"campaign and are now knitting squares to make blankets. A square is really achievable, you have some mindfulness time and then you can join them together to create a blanket to help those in need - perfect!!

Now other CAS groups might want to be involved. Hopefully we can make more squares for more blankets for hand in hand for Syria perhaps maybe have some kind of knit-athon!Activity 3A group of pupils are creating felt banners of dancers to raise awareness for Discovering Hands. We hope that the banners will tour Switzerland to help raise awareness and spark interest in this amazing project, ultimately we want a feasibility study to begin and for this method of breast examinations to be undertaken in Switzerland. They have started writing a blog, it is in the early stages but they are hoping to document their journey.The whole project is organised and inspired by Pure Felt and it is amazing as it has enabled the pupils to consider and work on a project that has an impact outside of the school. They have also worked on raising awareness for breast cancer and breast examinations within school.

But what now? I feel there is more. I feel it could be a more considered approach and I feel I could engage with more pupils. I am working with other CAS groups but I would like to develop more practical projects, develop space for creativity and mindfulness - starting small is my current process but where do I go from there?

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