The Start of My Notebook & a New Story

I'm impressed by folks like Brad Ovenell-Carter, Amy Burvall and Austin Kleon.  Thinkers who produce steady streams of process and consideration, making and contemplating, giving us all a looksee into the state of their thinking.

While I don't have the doodling prowess of @Braddo . . .

Or the fanciful digital touch of @amyburvall  . . .

Or the effortless real cool of @austinkleon . . .

I do have a desire to pull back the curtains on my brain a bit more and do a more deliberate keeping recording and sharing of those thoughts.

I bought a notebook.  AC Moore.  3 bucks.  On sale.  This one stays with me.

I also bought a bigger sketch book.  Also at AC Moore.  5 bucks.  Recycled.  Made in the USA.  Nice.  This one stays in the house.

Helpful to have a spouse looking out for you with a keen eye for coupons and bargains.

I started drawing out some ideas and notions and putting them up on my Instagram.

Not going to force it.  Not going to set an unreasonable expectations for myself.  What I am going to do instead is use these two tools and my trusty -- and adorably pink argyle -- Galaxy 3, instead of the piles and piles of recycled leftover handouts and misprints that lead to manilla folders stuffed with haphazard.  (I've many of these folders.  They are difficult to flip through.)

And this should begin a new story.  A story of my upcoming doings and possibilities, my upcoming school year, and a story of trying to be just a little more intentional and seeing where that takes me.

Power of a Film Quote

I wasn't intending to blog on this topic, but a rousing Twitter chat (#caedchat moderated by @davidtedu) broke out this evening and wow . . .

Movies.  Film.   We've talked about trailers and condensing story and using those powerful elements of story to enhance student engagement with our content.

Tonight's chat was all about the power of a single quote and why film quotes, in particular, endure, pack so much meaning into a single phrase, sentence or paragraph.  We also discussed the inherent value of film quotes as a way of achieving common ground with students, parents and colleagues.

We also got ridiculous.  And that was a welcome feeling this evening.

Here is just a sampling:

On the value of a pithy film quote toward connecting with students, parents and colleagues, we highlighted the shared experience as having tremendous worth.  When we are virtual strangers, mutual enjoyment over a film, a piece of storytelling that has such emotional resonance.

Regardless of comedy or drama, great films cause us to feel.  And usually those feelings align across the audience.  When we bring up films in class, when we quote from them, that shock of recognition in our students -- that is powerful. In that one moment, we are compatriots with a shared love.  The walls of authority and obedience dissolve and we are all just laughing, or crying, or sighing, or shuddering -- together.

Why do they have so much meaning? Those single quotes?  Firstly, they come armed with aforementioned emotional experience.  Secondly, we remember those quotes and immediately the story returns as well along with all of its merits and understandings and semantic connections.  A single quote may ignite a near total recall of conflicts and character arcs, themes and settings.  And that is notable as we consider our storytelling.

While we never know just when a film is going to produce a memorable quote -- I don't think most screenwriters craft the lines with quotable intentions (notice I said most) -- we can craft stories with the foresight that if we make each do its job with tight, powerful impactful prose and verse?

Why, our students might be quoting from our stories and those of their peers well into the future.

Storytelling Kit?

Last year I started something novel for me as a high school teacher, but somewhat ho-hum for the elementary teaching ranks: school supplies.

I requested each student acquire a personal design kit, a collection of tools that would prove useful to the sorts of exploring and understanding we would be doing during the year under the tenets of design thinking.

Design thinking is empathy-fueled, user-centered problem solving.  DT involves a great deal of interviewing and uncovering, brainstorming and ideating,  sorting of collected data and insights, and piles of rapid prototyping before producing a solution and thus beginning the feedback and iteration process all over again.  To help those processes, and related activities, come alive I requested students provide the following:

Design Kit Starter Set

Medium and/or Fine Point Sharpies (2)

Dry Erase Markers (not yellow) (2)

Colored Pencils (small pack)

Colored Markers (fine or medium) (small pack)

Scissors (1 pair)

Glue Sticks (2)  

I priced it out using back to school sale prices and figured all of the above could be acquired for $10 or less at local retailers.

I also made certain the above could fit inside of a gallon-sized freezer bag.  I purchased the freezer bags along with six plastic dishpans (one for each class) on a heckuva deal at Target, used my Target card to save 5% and give back a percentage to my kids' elementary school.  Forty bucks and I had bags to spare and tubs I could reuse from year to year.  All of the kits fit nicely on a standard TV cart.  And since we no longer need the TVs with our LCD projectors, I was able to find a cart easily.  Portable.  Flexible.  And students have their own supplies at their disposal, making life much easier for me overall.  (If a student couldn't afford a set, I had some classroom supplies -- my stock just lasted much, much longer into the year.)  Plus, students had option to take their kits home at the end of the year. Most didn't.  Bonus.

All of this led me to a pondering a storyteller's kit and what that might look like.

It is just a brainstorm.  Nothing prescriptive here.  And in the process of thinking about what my students would need to tell some story in a digital landscape, I stumbled on that idea of older gen smart phones.  Many families have them kicking around the house, stashed in drawers and cabinets, too expensive a purchase to discard, too old to be of immediate value.

What if students had old cellphones available as quick and easy audio/video recorders?  How might that change the game?

What might you include in such a kit?

What hurdles would you face in helping students develop such kits and, perhaps most importantly, how might those hurdles be surpassed? 

Exploring "Why Storytelling in the Classroom Matters"

Just a couple of weeks ago, Matthew James Friday's article on storytelling appeared in Edutopia.



Why Storytelling in the Classroom Matters



Fortuitous timing for  class, to be sure.



What I noticed more importantly is that list of suggestions on how to become a storyteller.

So How Do You Become a Storyteller?
I recommend the following:

1. Read as many different world folktales, fables, myths, and legends as you can.
2. Watch professional storytellers and take notes about how they do it. Every storyteller is different, and you can learn something from them all.
3. Build your confidence by reading your students picture books or chapter books with an interesting voice. Stop to ask questions. Make the book reading interactive. It will help you create a shared event with a story.
4. Pick stories with small numbers of characters and repeating events, as these are easiest to remember. Having said that, pick any story you like -- no, that you love! If it captivates you, it will captivate the younger ones, too.
5. Write the stories down in a notebook. Writing helps you remember a story, and it models the same to the children.
6. When you start "telling" your story, it's OK to have the book nearby and to take a look at it if you forget a part. Don't be too hard on yourself. You are a student again.
7. Get yourself a "prop box" made of old bits of linen, and fill it with hats from charity shops and random objects that children can use imaginatively. I got a lot of my materials from recycling centers.

What would happen if your students each chose one of those seven to focus on for their own development as storytellers?



What would happen if you chose one for yourself from those seven with which to develop greater facility within the first six weeks of school?



Which would you choose?



Which do you find daunting?



Which would come most natural?



One of my professional goals this year will be to keep a proper notebook.  I tend to scatter my thoughts across space and time in the shape of recycled handouts with lesson plans scribbled upon the back and a string of half-tweets and sorta-emails left in various digital environs.



I bought a simple, generic moleskin wannabe notebook, blank pages, sized small, covered in black.



I also bought a  spiral bound sketchbook of recycled plain white sheets.  It is much larger, less easily wielded but should plenty of space to vizthink, doodle, scrawl, capturemy ideas as well as possible via the static image.

I plan to stuff it full of stories.  Bits and pieces.  Things I may use for lessons.  Things I may use for theater.  Things I may share.  Things I may keep to myself.   Characters.  Plots.  Emotions.  If we take a moment to remember those core elements of story, it can help us organize our notes in ways that may make accessing them later, just that much more meaningful.

Then again, just the act of writing them down in one place?  That would be a great step for me.

What about you and your students?