Anxiety is a major ailment that befalls many people today. If not arrested early, a person suffering from anxiety may succumb to depression. It was with this context in mind that my school invited EYEYAH! to hold an anxiety workshop at our in-house library.

Normally, I wouldn’t have given much thought to it but my curiosity was piqued when I realised that this initiative was supported by The James Dyson Foundation. Sufficiently curious to even do some Googling and write an article about it.

James Dyson is dyslexic, so he could have leveraged his lively imagination to invent the modern vacuum cleaner. This may be a reason why a foundation named after him is supportive of art creation even though it aims to “nurture the next generation of engineers”. 

The workshop instantly took on a different slant for me. Since I teach a class of 2-6 dyslexic students, I could take them to our library and use the artworks to explore their dyslexic minds. Why 2 to 6 students? Because some of them don’t attend school regularly, that’s why. Haha.

To elicit responses from them, I handwrote a worksheet that only has 3 questions:

1) What makes you anxious?

2) Are you skilful at drawing?

3) Do you find enjoyment from this exhibition?

Prior to this lesson, I have always thought that most dyslexic people see the world in the form of images and are adept at drawing. This may just be a stereotype because most of my students just answered non-commital responses like “blank” and “idk”. But one of them said about how he can think things when he is allowed to draw over images. I know that doesn’t kinda make sense but I wasn’t expecting him to be able to explain himself in the first place. So, I was impressed with and touched by his level of self-awareness. 

I guess my job for the remaining part of this year is to help my other boys find out how they learn and retend information best!