Thanks for an inspiring week of
preplanning! I am always left in awe of the talent we have at Trinity!
Every Friday during the school year, I
send out an article that caught my attention and that I hope provokes
thought in you.
As we live in a hectic, on-demand society
where people are used to the 140-character limit of Twitter, I try to
parse the weekly article to its salient points, so it’s a fairly quick read.
Throughout the year the articles focus on an
array of topics appropriate to Trinity: for example, fostering inclusion in the
classroom, supporting a high-quality preschool education, maximizing student
learning, etc.
I don’t always support the position of every
article, but as a believer in an open marketplace of ideas (something that is
sadly today, especially at colleges and universities, in these polarized
times), I like to read articles that make me
think, especially ones that confront my beliefs and hidden biases as
an educator.
This year’s first article summary is How Teens Can Develop
and Share Meaningful Stories with The Moth, which I referenced on
Tuesday.
As we talked about, helping empower students to become
storytellers supports so much of what we strive for as an elementary school:
writing, public speaking, social-emotional skills, DEI.
Feel free to try out storytelling in your classroom. I’m also
linking an article entitled How to Be a Better Storyteller which
provides simple steps to enhance one’s storytelling abilities.
Thanks again for a great week and enjoy our final weekend before
our kids come back to us excited for the 2017-18 school year!
Joe
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Aleeza
Kazmi endured her first identity crisis when she was 6 years old. It was during
a first-grade art class, when she and her classmates were drawing
self-portraits. Seeing herself as just like her white-skinned peers, Kazmi
reached for the peach-colored oil pastel to fill in her face. Just then, her
teacher intervened. “That’s not your color,” the teacher told her, and handed
Kazmi a stubby brown crayon instead. “That was the first time I realized I
wasn’t white like all my friends,” she said.
Kazmi told
this story about
her first brush with racial awareness when she was a senior in high school,
before dozens of classmates. She had taken part in a 10-week afterschool
program run by The Moth, a storytelling enterprise that invites people of all
ages to share their personal narratives on stage. Along with a handful of
classmates, Kazmi had met once a week to identify a powerful personal story and
learn how to tell it. Delivering the tale about her art-class trial in the
school’s black box theater, without notes, marked the culmination of Kazmi’s
storytelling work.
The Moth
has been around for 20 years. The program’s founder named it after the fluttery
insect when he realized that people gathered to storytellers like moths to
light. Over the past few years, The Moth has moved into schools, offering
afterschool workshops, a class curriculum and an intensive three-day
storytelling session for teachers.
The
essential ingredients of a Moth story are simple: Participants tell their
stories aloud and without notes; when storytellers talk, the audience listens;
and all stories at a given session revolve around one simple theme. The point
is to build community among storytellers and listeners.
One school
in Manhattan had students develop
their personal stories around the the theme of courage.
Students
told stories about kitchen disasters, lost hamsters, and minor acts of
adolescent agitation, like chopping off hair. Anxious at first about their
ability to perform, students came to embrace the experience, knowing they had
something to say and experiencing their own voice as something valuable.
The Moth
works to build a tight feeling of community in the class, so kids feel safe
before sharing personal stories. Teachers play some Moth podcasts like Bad Haircut and Lego Crimes, helping
students discern how a storyteller adapts language to build suspense or
generate humor.
At the end
of the class, students tell their narratives aloud within their small group and
then have the option to share with the entire class.
By
listening to classmates’ tales of embarrassment or woe, students recognize
their shared vulnerability.
So far, 300
teachers from around the world have formed partnerships with The Moth that
allow them to use the curriculum for
free and to interact with one another on a just-for-teachers portal.
For her
part, Aleeza Kazmi is hooked on storytelling. She often hears from students who
saw a video of her Moth talk, and said that many identify with her ill-fated
choice of colors for her childhood self-portrait. Now 19, Kazmi tells her story
to elementary school children and takes part in other Moth education programs.
“It’s so cool that a story that happened in my life has now
touched people around the world,” Kazmi said.
