As if we needed any more reasons to love, respect, and trust the so-incredible-it-hurts Lynda Barry; she is a certified genius after all.  But she threw another one at us with the introduction of her doodling-as-a-way-of-staying-present technique.

(images from Picture This, by Lynda Barry; published by Drawn and Quarterly;
copyright 2010 by Lynda Barry)

This seemed to mesh perfectly with what we discovered by following the advice of Lynda Barry to look into the work of psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist during our big Brain Research project in Term One, specifically how by giving the left side of the brain the narrow focus it craves, the right hemisphere is freed up into a larger open awareness–a kind of non-thinking thinking place that we’re practicing applying to everything we do in class, whether it’s solving a complex math problem or making a great shot or strong defensive in PE.

Keeping the hand in motion: in other parts of her work, Lynda Barry equates this with how going for a walk when you’re stuck with a problem seems to loosen things up and present a solution.

“Movement is key,” she says. “I wonder why?”  And what’s interesting is that this movement seems to lead to a kind of inner stillness, from which unexpected ideas emerge.

With our sense of curiosity piqued, we tried out the technique while looking at the short story that runs through the pages of Lynda Barry’s image exploration activity book about “writing the unthinkable,” What It Is:

 

Then we tried it again while listening to an episode from Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast that seemed to tie exquisitely to our Conscious Explorers Club meditation work: “Brené on Strong Backs, Soft Fronts, and Wild Hearts“:

 

A few brave souls even tried “doodling as meditation” during a guided meditation by Dr. James Maskalyk (meditation starts at around the 30:00 mark):

And then finally (for now!), we applied the technique to our big work in Social Studies–following and understanding the 2020 U.S. Election–and doodled to capture the details of a PBS NewsHour podcast in which the inestimable Judy Woodruff (the honorary Godmother of Div. 3, although she doesn’t know it) and her top-notch crew of Capitol Hill reporters, Yamiche Alcindor, Lisa Desjardins, and Amna Nawaz share their on-the-ground experiences of the insurrection at the Capitol building on January 6:

 

Move over, boring bullet points.  Hello, doodle.  Where have you been all our lives?  Oh, yah… you were with us from the very beginning.  We just needed a genius to point that out.