Storytelling: Finding Your Own Voice

Allergies and life have kept me busy...it was hard to blog but I am back!!! This week I was confronted with searching for a topic to research for my writing class.  After much tought I decided to research about student's personal stories in the classroom.

One of the reasons why I chose this topic were the numerous conversations with classmates this semester when doing some of the papers we had been assigned.  In the past papers were often what teachers wanted and chose, this semester however opened up an opportunity for students to write from personal experience.  My classmates found this to be interesting, engaging and my professor found it authentic.  My peers found that papers were easier to write and that the final product was something they wanted to cherished.  I also found myself thinking the same, it is a piece of writing that I want to share with my daughter since the subject is her ultrasound picture or it is a piece of writing that I want to share with my students because it talks about how I became to love writing. 

Stories from our own lives open up a world of experiences different for everyone in the classroom.  Stories might be similar but they won't be exactly the same, this is enriching for those looking for authenticity in writing.  This view showed me to value my writing more since it is a testament of my growth as a writer, learner and teacher.  It is also valuable since in the future I can show these pieces to people around me who Might find a bit of inspiration in my stories. 

I once wrote a paper on Native American storytelling and how this tradition is highly valued in their society.  I contrasted that to how now a days we mainly stick to a cannon of writers often forgetting that we ourselves are storytellers, worthy of telling our own stories.  Today I see the importance of injecting this into the minds of our students.  It is important that they feel their stories are valuable, it is important that we give their stories a place in the classroom...it is important to encourage them to write outside of classroom walls.  Students need to develop a voice and an identity in a world that is often controlled by others above them.