Artist

Eli has had a real tough time recently suppressing his urge to draw, at school. He draws on everything including homework to turn in, assignments and examples that are distributed. The teachers were all complaining about it. "Eli needs to remember that I am not the art teacher," wrote one. I chose to ignore the complaints and have focused on getting him not to mess up school property and stuff that he'll have to turn in. Middling success in that regard too.

His support person at school, Mrs. Mitchell suggested a contract to establish limits. We agreed to it, albeit with reservations: we're pretty sure it won't last long. It didn't. Eli drew a picture on the back of the contract!



In Social Studies he is in a small group for some in-class project. One of the components is a drawing of whatever the project is (I don't know the scope or topic of the project). Eli's group tasked him with making the drawing. Nice call on the part of the group, and on the part of the teacher for letting things sort themselves out this way.

Eli had to answer a single science question for homework last night. It took a couple of sentences. I gave him a blank piece of paper and told him to write out his answer, rather than dictate it to me on the word processor. I watched him get started and then left him alone. Twenty minutes later the answer was done, and the rest of the page was filled with a huge drawing of the answer. It had to do with how the breeze generated by a fan causes a person who is sweating to feel cooler. So Eli had drawn a solar-powered fan, showing in minute detail the generation of electricity and distribution to the machine. Lots of wires, batteries and cells and packs, and such!

I had to laugh. It was right on target for the question he had answered. And the solar-power aspect will appeal (I think) to the teacher. So I let it go. Eli said, "I can get extra credit for the illustration." Right; we'll see!

But my thing is, if he's going to draw, why not figure out a way to let this be the way he gets his assignments done? The narrative stuff, sure; but accompanied by an artistic representation; why not?