Why this blog?

"... Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Letters to a Young Artist, R. M. Rilke

Rooted in the promise and challenge of growth ...

these are letters from a young teacher.

Monday, May 25, 2009

The power of storytelling with children

Telling stories with K-2 students at my children's center

Soon after I arrived back in Seattle, I began looking for jobs in education to supplement my studies, and conveniently fell right into a great children's center that functions as a full-day preschool and houses an after-school program from preschool "graduates" in Kindergarten through 4th grade. Little did I know how soon and how deeply I would become enveloped into this new community of practitioners of education, young and younger.

The most fascinating aspect of this learning community is that it practices the "emergent" curriculum. That is, whereas I built my Five Senses Unit during my student teaching based on the curriculum standards of the State of Vermont - quite a hefty volume, to say the least - here at the children's center, the year begins with empty binders. Children play first, and teachers observe consistently and intentionally, looking for the clues that children's play offers as avenues into their thinking and patterns of interests. Once something is found to be of particular interest to the children, the teacher creates and/or designs a "provocation" for children to engage with - anything from a new material to play with, like colored sand or sea shells, to a topical exercise, as one classroom addressed recent difficulties in sharing legos. Continuously, teachers are developing their observations into "documentations": narratives that recall and begin to interpret children's experiences in the classroom. As the year moves on, documentations fill the empty binders, so that come the end of the year, the "curriculum" is a story of each classroom.

It is an exciting practice to engage in, myself! My first was on the use of stories as provocations with the students. I noticed I had quickly earned a reputation with my kiddos as "the one who tells good stories", so that I best have a new story to tell them everyday, or they'll be disappointed! This was my first clue that stories might serve as powerful thematic provocations - vehicles into discussion on any number of topics. I wish I could attach my first documentation here as a pdf-file, but I don't have that capacity with this blog. So, here's a taste of it:

I can’t think of a better way to begin getting to know the Big Kids and establishing positive relationships with them. My favorite part about telling stories is to watch to see what conversation comes out of them afterwards. What the stories mean to the kids means more to me than what the stories mean to me. That’s how I found out that David thinks of pride as “being really happy about something” and that Elissa would rather be the mouse that goes second to pluck a whisker from Coyote’s face when he’s sleeping than be the first. “It’s not as scary, but you’re still being brave,” she said.

Subsequent documentations have come out of the more lengthy conversation I had with David about pride, for example, and I'm working on one now that recalls the logical problem solving entailed in the story of a peasant who had to divide one goose among six members of the royal family!

Another selection from my initial documentation:

Stories used in teaching and curriculum in other schools have sometimes come under fire because parents feel that teachers are trying to indoctrinate their children with a particular ideology. This is an understandable position – stories are used for a variety of purposes and have differed outcomes. If there ever is a story that feels too uncomfortable – for a parent and/or a child – it is very important to me to address this concern. My pursuit in telling stories and talking about them is not to arrive at a final “moral of the story” for everyone to take home like a party favor; rather stories are like mirrors that offer us a reflection of ourselves, and it is up to us to decide what we want to see in them.

We shall see how they progress. More documentations to come!
(If you'd like to see the full documentations, just send me an email, I'll be happy to send you some as attachments!)

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