Storying
This week marked meetings with our administrators to review our Profession Growth Plans. I am serving in a large composite high school this year and don’t get much face to face time with my principal. The time to chat were nice.
After we talked about my plan, my administrator commented, “I don’t really know what to call the work you’re doing, with Project 104, with Jane* & Mark, its like you’re creating a space they take with them.”
I smiled.
“I know what to call it,” I said. “Storying.”
I chatted a bit explaining the process and the rationale of sharing our stories of experience as a way to find a sacred space that we carry within. Storying.
What i was really feeling, however, what was breathing and whispering all around me, were student stories of experience, my stories of experience, and the giddy like a pre-schooler work of attending to stories of experience that has been my thesis journey.
The phenomena of storying.
No longer only theory, no longer teachings pulled solely from my Dad, bits understood from the Circle of Courage, its philosophical and its connectiveness underpinnings. No longer was this the methodology of narrative inquirers, sharing stories of experience.
Living storying. Messy storying. With puzzles unfolding and much uncertainty and bursting with the interloopings, the weavings, the complexities of potential.
My Dad would say, there is a teaching there.
Today, I understand the name of this sacred space.
Storying.
Thank you for sharing, Cori! I love that you create and allow a space for students to thrive in creativity and in risk taking. I love hearing about what the students are doing – and I enjoy seeing their tweets of their works.
Personally, I think it is great how you have challenged my own personal definition of storying. You have challenged my thinking and my own reflections. Thank you for reminding me to listening to my own stories, to share, and to be attentive to those of others. And thank you for creating a place for young people to do that same!
This! All of it. I so look forward to you being able to write more freely again, once you have completed your thesis. I have learned so much from you, Cori, about storying, attending to story, about uncovering this unique phenomena with other humans, namely our students, a space to story and from which to, as you say, “find a sacred space that we carry within.” Thanks for sharing this.