In-Sight Video: Reaching within, Going beyond/Projet Vidéo : De L'intérieur À L'au-Delà

For several years I have worked on three islands in a school district in British Columbia offering music therapy sessions for children who struggle in school or have special needs. Once in a while I have the privilege of working with a student for six or seven years, right into Grade 8. As I enter the last few months of our time together, I ask myself, What is the greatest gift I can offer to this child to send him on his way into the bigger world? These are kids who have grown up on small islands. The high school is on a larger island and requires a daily commute by water taxi. This is what the students must face in addition to their personal exceptionalities and challenges, many of which will accompany them through their entire lives.The answer to my internal question is the gift of self-love - somehow helping these kids (as I have been trying to do all along an underpinning to our work/play on their challenges) to feel the joy of who they are unique individuals, to know their own strengths and bright qualities, and to believe in these and go forward with them in their hearts. That is more important than any academic learning or achievement. The sooner we can accept who we are and deeply absorb the brilliance of our best qualities, the sooner we will be able to start becoming strong and wise and able to move with ease in the world.At this stage of our work together, my contribution to this far-reaching objective is to lead these individuals in a Guided Imagery and Music experience. The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music is defined as a music-centered exploration of consciousness [where] specially sequenced classical music programs are used to stimulate and sustain a dynamic unfolding of inner experiences (Clark & Keiser-Mardis, 1999). I often use an abbreviated and adapted form of this with children or groups. The adapted Guided Imagery and Music activity was chosen to focus on just what I described above. After leading individual students in a relaxation exercise, I suggest that they envision themselves they were growing up in their island environments, at each stage pausing to regard and acknowledge all their special qualities. The stages I suggest are childhood, the present, adolescence in the new high school, and beyond into adulthood. This is followedby deep listening to specially chosen music followed by a discussion - which is often not directly pertinent to the experience they have just had. Yet I know that music works in mysterious ways, settling deep into our beings and operating metaphorically in our lives. Although it doesn't feed my ego, I know how to be with the silence or the seemingly unrelated comments. Simply, I am there to offer that gift, in that moment in time.Enter the grades K-8 school on the island where I live, which my own children have attended. For many years in June at the school-leaving ceremony, I have watched a slide show of each member of the Grade 8 graduating class, usually quite a humorous depiction of their lives in photos. This slide show is like a rite of passage they prepare to leave their old grade school.So, against this backdrop of philosophy and experience, I collaborated with Sharon, a local First Nations filmmaker, on a potent learning experience with a tangible end product for all the Grade 8 students from this school. We called it the In-Sight video project, and it was funded by Ptarmigan Music. The students were to learn how to make a short film using a multitude of creative techniques to express the essence of their lives to this point and who they are unique individuals.How could we attempt to get to the essence of who these 13- and 14-yearolds are and then go beyond to a potent outward expression of it? We began by modeling.New to this year's project was a precursor short course in colonization, which was funded by an Aboriginal Education Enhancement grant. Sharon taught the kids some of the history of the colonization of Aboriginal people in Canada from a First Nations perspective, including horrific stories of her own family members in generations past. …

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