What We Have in Common

What do we have in common? What makes us different? How can we build ties between us? These were some of the questions used to trigger discussion among students at Katalin Erauso School, with the aim of boosting their sense of belonging and drawing their attention to collective endeavors.

First, the children were given the task of making lists of the cities where they had lived, the colors they liked, etc. Then, in pairs, they had to find the elements their lists had in common, circling the items in order to find the intersections. The goal was to work with mathematical concepts and, more importantly, to build ties with their classmates, focusing on both what they had in common and what made them unique. In addition to contributing to the integration of individual students into the group, the activity led to a higher-level of self-knowledge.

The following activity was in the field of action art, and it involved physical contact. The students had to mark with color the areas where their body parts touched—for instance, a desk where their arms were side by side—or where two objects met—a pen and a desk, for example. This enabled them to experiment with the configurations of the different objects they could find at school.

Next, the children were asked to draw the outlines of their hands in a series of exercises aimed at exploring the connections with their own bodies and their representation. Then, they drew different body parts and put them together in a collective portrait of a hybrid being. Using their hands again, they measured things and places, connecting bodies and spaces: the perimeter of a tile on the floor, the surface of a chair or a desk, the height of the steps, etc. Last but not least, they had to outline their own bodies. Then, cutting their faces in an oval, they were asked to put them on a classmate’s body to create a hybrid again. In the process, they became more aware of their bodies and the space around them by resorting to artistic practices like performance and action art.