Re: [Heartlogic-dev] FW: Proverbs from 1st Graders

[William L. Jarrold]

On Fri, 21 May 2004, Josh White wrote:

> Ignore the pithy humor - there's something relevant and useful for the
> heartlogic project in this exercise.  Look at #14 for example.  Do you
> see what I mean?

I'm not sure I see what you mean...

>  14. Where there's smoke there's ......pollution.

...I suppose what you mean is that there are zillions of ways to finish
even the smallest "story" (e.g. Sentence 14 above).  Many of these ways
have at least one, and possibly many affective interps associated.  Is
that what you mean?

Anyway, these type of complete the sentence type tasks are often given to
kids.  And they work pretty well.  They are a great way to pull material
out of kids that is relevant to how they are doing psychologically.

You'd think the best way to find out would be just to talk to them.  Nope.
I have found in my year long stint as a special ed counselor at an
elementary school that if you directly ask a kid how they are doing, they
will almost always say "Great."  They seem to lack the ability to either
(a) introspect in detail about their own internal state or (b) do (a) with
someone playing the role of therapist, i.e. someone they don't really have
a lot of experience with but with whom they are expected to bare their
soul.

Complete the sentence type tasks are one way to get around these
obstacles.  Projective drawings are another.  And also, non-directive
play therapy can tell you something too.  But, each of these is not
without a caveat.  One must be very careful to have other more well
ground sources of info too.

But anyway, I have digressed far beyond your original question.

Bill