I watched the last recorded session in the Resilience section for the 2020 Lilly Conference online asynchronous sessions. It was a short and thought-provoking session on a topic I didn’t know much about. Dr. Jeffrey M. Sullivan from the Department of Counselor Education at Sam Houston University. Sullivan described a sandtray activity as typically being considered a therapeutic medium and is a way of using expressive arts and symbolic representation to explore processes. Sullivan uses sandtray activities in the classroom to process specific learning outcomes, the process of learning, and even barriers to learning. Learners create in the sand a representation of their learning process. This use, as Sullivan clarified, is a classroom activity and not a therapeutic intervention. Sullivan explained how easy it is to create a sandtray activity setup up. First, you need a sandtray that can be a planting pot tray. Sand can be purchased from a hardware store or be magic sand. I instantly pictured the purple magnetic sand that Amada played with, and I spent way too much time vacuuming up from floors and carpet. I would probably stick with “normal” sand. The last component is the really fun one: for sandtray activities you need an assortment of figures. I thought about Lego figures though Sullivan mentioned trees, houses, figures that represent sad/glad/mad… Sullivan mentioned that you may tailor your assortment of figures to your classroom sessions and topics. Once you have your sandtray components, you need to facilitate the sandtray activity in the classroom. Sullivan explained that you start with a prompt to set the stage for the type of scene that the learners will create: “use the figures available to create a scene that represents what was most important for you in what we just learned”. Oh, this made me think! We could get really creative and expose particular barriers or challenges. Sullivan walked the viewers through an example of a sandtray and an interpretation. I enjoyed Sullivan’s detailed explanation of the rationale and processing of a sandtray activity. Sullivan has four steps to processing a sandtray activity in the classroom:
- Start with open-ended questions/prompts such as: “tell me about the scene you created.”
- Look but don’t touch: Sullivan emphasized this is a sign of respect of the creator’s sandtray.
- Look for interesting connections in the figures by interpreting the symbolism. This is the fun part to explore the learning process. Sullivan also mentioned asking the student to help understand… and doing this by inviting exploration instead of interpreting for the learner.
- Empower change: “If you could change something in your tray, what would it be?”
- Title your creation!
Sullivan ended by explaining how straight-forward it is to implement sandtray in an online environment. Sullivan’s approach is to help the learners get the materials (instructor could provide kits) and then doing sessions on Zoom, for example. I wondered if there could be online sandtray simulations. I even think we could set it up as a GoogleSlide! Oh, this was a fun session, and I would have never guessed the content from the title.
