Today was the second day of school, and I wasn’t playing games. Nah, I know the hum-drum of the first few days of school and how it can be filled with filler moments passed off as “getting to know” one another. But I am not about that life. And so, I didn’t live that life — I wanted my classes to know who I was and what my classroom, which will become theirs too, will be about and that’s work.
Don’t get me wrong, I value relationships and the effectiveness of having a good rapport with students, and if I am being honest here, I do that pretty well and effortlessly. However, I am intentional in building those relationships. This year, as a part of that process, I am being very specific with my word choice as I have students sitting in threes, or pods, and in addressing their seating arrangement, I’ve made it a point to refer to their pods as their community and that their community is a microcosm or the class community, which is the macrocosm. This vernacular was explained, and I made sure to put the onus of taking care of their “pod people” on them for the betterment and health of the class community.
With the culture of the class set on the first day (we also did some small introductory questions about self and expectations, challenges, and working to be the best version of one’s self), there was no reason not to sprint into content. The school year is 180 days and there’s a massive amount of content to cover, not to mention deficiencies that will have to be addressed as we attempt to learn this year. There’s no time to waste… But more than that, it will be the deliverance of the content through instruction that keeps them engaged, I believe that wholeheartedly.
So, on the second day of school we began looking at narrative design and the role that plot plays in its structure.
I made a decision going into this school year, my return to the classroom after a two-year absence, that my understanding of the craft of teaching would be the guiding light for the culture of my classroom and that it would foster what the content would be about for instruction: The centerpiece of content for my classes will be STORYTELLING.
As most of you all know, I am very passionate about storytelling. I love it. I spend a lot of time with it, doing it myself, but also enjoying it, examining it, sharing it. But more than that, I am also very passionate about teaching it. See, storytelling is literally at the heart of education. Thousands of years ago, it was the first way that learning took place. Over time, its importance has lessened, lost I’m sure, in the entertainment aspect of it and maybe even the aristocracy of it, how novels and plays have been placed on a pedestal, the crowned jewels of literature that cannot be touched, only gazed upon in awe (I feel that a lot of literature is revered rather than studied and dissected, learners need to get down and dirty with texts, books, short stories, plays, comics, graphic novels, TV shows and scripts, films and screenplays, and audio dramas and their scripts, and they need to be more contemporary, especially early on in the learning years). So, a goal of mine for this year, is to take students on a journey through storytelling and from that centerpiece, all aspects of the curriculum will manifest.
Creativity is the lifeblood, if you will, of storytelling, and thus of all forms of written expression and, consequently, reading comprehension. To understand your own creativity only puts you closer to understanding something like “author’s purpose” and all that comes along with conveying a message to readership or viewership. If students experience their own creativity first, if they learn that being creative isn’t a license to “free write” and do whatever you want with no rules, but that creativity requires limitation, the structuring and organizing of their creativity, then they will develop the tools to apply what they have learned about themselves and their creation to other content. See, learning is transferrable.
So, today we began this journey with the PLOT DIAGRAM, and we are using the plot diagram to understand the construct of how to tell a story, which is how they will begin to learn to structure their creativity. In the days to come, we will build a story from the ground up, while on Reading Days (I’ve created R Days and W Days) they will take any objective that we’ve worked on during the Writing Days, i.e. the plot diagram today, and apply it to texts that we will be reading and/or attempting to comprehend.
This year is ALL ABOUT STORYTELLING and my approach is meant to empower students to finally discover themselves, find their voices, and access comprehension tools that are inherent to them, all by fostering creativity and setting creativity as the foundation for learning. I’ll let you all know how it goes…
THANK YOU ALL once again for taking the time to read this CHARACTER + OBSTACLE = STORY Substack. I hope you noticed in the above picture/image that the name of this Substack was written on the board as part of my students’ notes. Like I said a few entries back, the title derived from the classroom, it’s always been a part of how I teach. Now, it’s just front and center, as I believe it should be. I look forward to your thoughts and comments and interactions with this entry.
Talk soon,
B