Zoë Randall Teacher Leadership Digital Portfolio
Conclusions
When I began my research, I wanted to examine how digital storytelling would affect my students’ sense of identity, empathy, and community. My vision for this project was to help 6th grade students express their individuality by telling a personal story about one significant moment in their lives. I wanted them to identify these moments in their lives or share the life of someone else. I hoped that through their digital stories they would share themselves. I hoped that sharing their stories would create a sense of empathy in our classroom by encouraging students to relate their life experiences. By working together to produce the stories, I wanted to inspire a community of storytellers, where everyone’s voice mattered and where everyone was willing to share their stories with each other and with the public. As their stories emerged, I paid close attention to how students experienced the digital storytelling process and how sharing personal stories affected them and their audience.
As I conclude my study, I have found that digital storytelling had different impacts than my previous intentions to build identity, empathy, and communityin my classroom. Rather than being stand-alone conclusions, identity, empathy and community were intertwined throughout the project experience. The project didn’t build a sense of identity in students so much as provide an opportunity for self-expression. Students used digital storytelling as a vehicle for sharing themselves with their peers. Through this process, most students learned how to share the heart of their story and tell a personal story at their comfort level. As I predicted, students were empathetic but it’s difficult to measure how the project instilled empathy over time. I saw empathy through the connections they were making to the other kids in class. This was possible because of the way the community was set up for helping and sharing. Students helped each other through being a class tech rover and a co-producer, teaching them the importance of having peer support and teamwork. As students shared their stories, they became more aware of each other’s defining moments. However, this was not the case with all students, and by the end of the semester, there were a few who remained reluctant to share a personal story. Some students were not as comfortable sharing personal stories, and some felt like they didn’t have a personal story to tell. Although I hoped that this experience would allow everyone to open up and share a personal story, I realized the importance of helping them grow through the process and accepting students where they are.
Along the way, I discovered many nuances about what happened as students shared digital stories. From my case studies, I gained valuable insight into how the project was affecting students on an individual level. In the end, what I learned can be summed up in three main themes:
Every student has a story to share, and different stories serve different purposes
Sharing personal stories is scary, but it doesn't have to be
The more personal the story, the greater impact it can have on the storyteller and the audience
Every student has a story to share, and different stories serve different purposes
For educators who want to produce digital stories with their students, it’s important to recognize that the process is individual and not everyone will experience it the same way. The way in which one student approaches the process will be completely different from another student. It is necessary to give students the tools and the time to be able to tell a story that they feel proud of and to allow them to go just beyond their comfort level. I realized in hindsight how it must have felt for some students to share their stories when they didn’t feel like they were as good as others. Because students vary in their writing and media abilities, they will vary in levels of digital story products as well. It’s important that everyone can see the variance in final products, but also celebrate the value of the stories that kids have to share. If a student isn’t feeling motivated to tell their story, try to get to the heart of it and see what happens. How do we do this as educators? In Lauren’s and Shelly’s cases, they shared insights on how giving our kids a little nudge of support can go a long way.
Every story needs to have a heart
“To me I thought that the deep and personal stories might have got the most applause because that means you put your heart into your story.”-Lauren
What does it mean to put your “heart into your story?” After producing digital stories with 112 6th graders, and now, 56 8th graders, I’ve learned storytelling takes heart. Students have to care about their story in order for the process to be meaningful to them and their families. When I reflected on the kinds of stories students had to share about their lives, I realized the colorful patterns and different threads that emerged. It wasn’t easy for students to share their personal lives, and not everyone was ready to take that leap into the unknown. For some, it was a need of sorts to express themselves, communicate a message to others, and let people know who they were. For others, it was a burden and a source of discomfort to be so open with people to whom they were vulnerable. I had hoped that by setting up a strong classroom culture that sharing would become natural and easy for all of my students. However, students shared the stories at the level they felt comfortable.
Different Strokes for Different Folks
When it came down to the types of stories kids wanted to tell, I found from my focus group the rewards and drawbacks to telling a personal story. According to them, subjects for stories that were more personal were about death and divorce. Stories that were less personal were about injuries. Lauren shared, “Some people wrote about injuries and that to me is not really as personal as like other people writing about divorces or somebody dies in their family.”
John continued, “I like that people open up and share personal things, but I don’t want them to get too personal cause I don’t want to know every single part of their life. I don’t want to get too personal.”
As I listened to what these students had to say about what makes a story more personal, it seemed as though they connected sharing of difficult moments in life to be more exposing and personal. Moments of happiness, memories of good times, stories of achievements and dreams didn’t strike them as the most personal stories. However, these types of stories helped the students learn more about each other in a different way. There are many different stories that will emerge when doing a project like this, and as I discovered, each one will surprise you, give insight into your student, and teach you something that is important to them.
Give Kids a Reason to Share their story
Getting them to think about people in their lives who have stories was an important step in the process of finding their story. Many students realized that their family members had a great affect on their lives and made meaningful subjects for telling stories. For some, they connected the loss of a family member to their own lives. For others, they wanted to express an homage to a family member who made a difference. These stories led students not only to think about their subjects but also about their audience. For some students, knowing that family would be watching their stories helped them formulate reasons to share.
In asking students to reflect on what they would gain from the process of sharing their story and what they hoped others would gain, I found that every student’s comfort level varied for different reasons. Below are some comments from students that help to highlight what they hoped they, and their audience, would gain through sharing their stories:
Expressing oneself-“I really don’t know anyone better than I do myself.”
Communicating a feeling-“I missed my friends so I wanted to make a story about them.”
Gaining release-“Well for me I really wanted to tell this story, because I really want to get this off my back.”
Sharing a Meaningful story-“Well I knew I wanted to tell the story of my friend because it’s meaningful and people can connect their same story to it.”
Providing Inspiration-“I wanted to let people know that if you try your best and believe in yourself, you will most likely get what you want.”
Communicating a Message-“I wanted to share with people that people die and you just have to live with the fact that they are going to die and you can’t do anything about it.”
Sharing personal stories is scary, but it doesn't have to be
“These digital stories, I know a lot of people didn’t want to get too personal but like if you want to be a person that is stuck in a shell all your life, that’s kind of not a great life.”-John
Students are taking risks to tell their story. The more personal the story, the bigger the risk. Even those who were proud of their stories had anxiety about showing them. John took the brave step of going outside his own personal comfort zone to share a story he described as “deep and dark from my past.” Although it wasn’t easy for him to express this story, he felt a need to dig deeper and share a big part of his life.
If I was to do this project again, I would tell students, “You’re going to experience a slight discomfort throughout this process. But, trust me, it will all be okay! We’re all in it together and you’ll be glad you did.” Yes! Sharing is scary! I didn’t realize at the beginning how much some students would want to open up and how much others would resist it. For some, the story is just under the surface, for others it’s burning to get out, and for a few it is still evolving.
Supporting Students to go Beyond their Comfort Zone
I realize now how important it is to get kids to explore their personal lives and be willing to share who they are and what matters to them with their peers. Middle school is an awkward time of social acceptance, self discovery, growing pains, and life lessons. I knew it would not be easy for students adjusting to a new school and new friends to share deep and personal stories with each other. But, I had to try! The motivation was strong for me to give students an opportunity to self-reflect, open up, and let us into their lives. Learning to share a personal story with others not only had the potential to create greater empathetic bonds between students but it also grounded students in a sense of themselves and their life history.
Lauren was a student who taught me to be persistent in helping kids to share something personal, even if it isn’t easy. She expressed in a focus group interview, “some of the digital storytelling projects were very emotional. My project was one of those because I didn’t really want to share this topic, because I thought it was too revealing, but I did because some people didn’t know that about me.” After screening her story, she felt proud and shared that it is important to “impact your family in a good way.”
In Lauren’s case, it took a little pushing and prodding to get her to be open and completely honest with her feelings in her writing. Through one-on-one conversations, and my insistence that students tell a story that they care about, many students ended up sharing deeply personal stories. If I hadn’t been able to push Lauren to step just outside of her comfort zone and say what was on her mind, she might have told a story about her first roller coaster ride and never have discovered something about herself through the process. In the end, she learned that she can tell a personal story and become comfortable sharing herself with others. She also learned that the value of sharing a story that came from her heart made a greater impact on her family. As a result, she felt a sense of accomplishment and success in sharing her story.
I would want Lauren’s triumph to be everyone’s experience, but it simply doesn’t work out that way. There are students who, for various reasons, aren’t ready to step outside of their comfort zone and express who they are to their peers. It’s not a bad thing, but in the end, the evidence shows a lack of positive results in these cases. For students who don’t explore their personal side, there is a lack of heart in the story and these students tended to feel less satisfied with the process. However, it's important to realize that this is not a failure. One student's inability to share now might emerge later as a desire to share in the future. I think the best thing to do is keep an open mind and to be encouraging. Whatever students have to share is a forward step in gaining the confidence it takes to be open with others.
Supporting Empathetic Connections Through Sharing and Critique
Studies show that there is a decline in empathy amongst today’s college aged students (Kolrath et all, 2010). When I read this article, it made me feel a sense of urgency to do something to change this trend. It worried me that it would only get worse unless kids were encouraged at a young age to understand each other. I wanted to start with my middle school students and encourage sharing our stories to help reverse this fate. As students shared stories, I wanted to know, was the process of sharing stories of their lives helping students to be more aware and empathetic towards each other? Would telling and sharing personal stories help students recognize and understand each other’s life circumstances and experiences better?
During the critique process, I found that students were making empathetic connections to each other. When students read their scripts, screened their rough cuts of the movies, and discussed feedback, different comments emerged. I transcribed videos of the critique process and found that students thought others were brave for sharing, they related to each other’s stories to their own experiences, and gave helpful feedback on the construction of the digital story. In one screening critique, a student offered support and admiration for another students’ efforts when he said, “I thought it was really brave that you put your own voice on there because a lot of people are afraid to put their own voice on there.” Every student had to make a voiceover of their story script, and for many this was the hardest part of the process. The students found ways to empathize not only with subject matter but also with the digital storytelling process.
Giving kids a chance to share how they relate to each other’s stories is important in reinforcing an empathetic culture. Lauren remarked during a critique of one story about friendship, “I can relate to your story because...coming here [to HTMMA] I kind of went away from all my friends, but I made a lot more friends than I did there in five years in two weeks here.” Many comments during our critiques started with, “I can relate to you because...” I felt that the hard work that went into building a supportive community for sharing made a huge difference in their relationships with each other.
Risks of Sharing
“I felt like everyone should have done a personal story, because when people didn’t do personal stories I felt that the people who didn’t were the ones who were mean and those people that are mean um were targeting the people that did personal stories.”-Tim
The issue of meanness and bullying emerged as a surprising limitation in the project. The topic came up during my last focus group interview about three months after the project had ended. One student remarked that “the digital story project did make some kids a little bit meaner. I mean some people, it made them have a motive for speaking to other people about their lives and stuff like that. I’m kind of one of those people because I don’t like to talk about my feelings that much.” Although the risks of sharing are important to take into consideration when doing this project, I heard this problem represented by a small population of students. I didn’t have a chance to find evidence of this beyond what the students were saying. Overall, the benefits and impacts of sharing outweighed the dissatisfaction that some students experienced. However, it does reinforce the importance of setting norms as a community. In order to prevent bullying in the future, I hope to emphasize the importance of sharing as a way to build empathy and understand each other. Although this was an outcome I hoped for, I don’t think I explicitly told this to the kids as a class. I hope to make it a clear goal for everyone in our community to share stories as a way to build empathy.
The more personal the story, the greater impact it can have on the storyteller and the audience
When I asked students to describe the impacts their stories made, Tim said that after sharing his movie with a family member, “once they watch the movie, they can remember that time and everything.” I interviewed another student who was making a digital story for her mom after the project had ended. She shared with me her motivation to make another story: “I can’t just explain it all in words, how much pain I was in, how much I love my mom for helping me through it, my family. I thought instead of just telling her about it, I could make like a video.”
These impacts on storytellers and their families share another part of the digital storytelling project that I hoped would emerge. I wanted the stories to be real, to come from kids’ hearts, to share moments in their lives, and to create an empathetic community. What happened was that many students found ways of expressing memories, experiences, and messages that had dramatic impacts on family members.
I highly recommend hosting a final exhibition screening of the stories as a necessary piece of the whole project. Without an invitational screening, students are shut off from the experience of sharing something personal and impacting the people closest to them. For family members who are the subjects of the stories, they benefit from watching what the students have to share. To keep a safe sharing space throughout the process, I believe it’s important that the invited audience stay intimate. As students experience sharing stories from telling a partner, to sharing in small groups, to a class screening and finally to an invited audience, they have many chances to become more comfortable sharing with a larger audience who is invested in learning their stories.
Although stories varied in how they impacted others, sharing them as a community made every voice heard. As I move towards the implications of my study, I want to encourage that voice in all of us to emerge. As educators we can provide opportunities to enrich our communities by understanding the people in them. Through storytelling, I saw students come together, learn to share, express themselves and what’s important to them, and find anaudience who could empathize with their life experiences.
As I conclude my study, I have found that digital storytelling had different impacts than my previous intentions to build identity, empathy, and communityin my classroom. Rather than being stand-alone conclusions, identity, empathy and community were intertwined throughout the project experience. The project didn’t build a sense of identity in students so much as provide an opportunity for self-expression. Students used digital storytelling as a vehicle for sharing themselves with their peers. Through this process, most students learned how to share the heart of their story and tell a personal story at their comfort level. As I predicted, students were empathetic but it’s difficult to measure how the project instilled empathy over time. I saw empathy through the connections they were making to the other kids in class. This was possible because of the way the community was set up for helping and sharing. Students helped each other through being a class tech rover and a co-producer, teaching them the importance of having peer support and teamwork. As students shared their stories, they became more aware of each other’s defining moments. However, this was not the case with all students, and by the end of the semester, there were a few who remained reluctant to share a personal story. Some students were not as comfortable sharing personal stories, and some felt like they didn’t have a personal story to tell. Although I hoped that this experience would allow everyone to open up and share a personal story, I realized the importance of helping them grow through the process and accepting students where they are.
Along the way, I discovered many nuances about what happened as students shared digital stories. From my case studies, I gained valuable insight into how the project was affecting students on an individual level. In the end, what I learned can be summed up in three main themes:
Every student has a story to share, and different stories serve different purposes
Sharing personal stories is scary, but it doesn't have to be
The more personal the story, the greater impact it can have on the storyteller and the audience
Every student has a story to share, and different stories serve different purposes
For educators who want to produce digital stories with their students, it’s important to recognize that the process is individual and not everyone will experience it the same way. The way in which one student approaches the process will be completely different from another student. It is necessary to give students the tools and the time to be able to tell a story that they feel proud of and to allow them to go just beyond their comfort level. I realized in hindsight how it must have felt for some students to share their stories when they didn’t feel like they were as good as others. Because students vary in their writing and media abilities, they will vary in levels of digital story products as well. It’s important that everyone can see the variance in final products, but also celebrate the value of the stories that kids have to share. If a student isn’t feeling motivated to tell their story, try to get to the heart of it and see what happens. How do we do this as educators? In Lauren’s and Shelly’s cases, they shared insights on how giving our kids a little nudge of support can go a long way.
Every story needs to have a heart
“To me I thought that the deep and personal stories might have got the most applause because that means you put your heart into your story.”-Lauren
What does it mean to put your “heart into your story?” After producing digital stories with 112 6th graders, and now, 56 8th graders, I’ve learned storytelling takes heart. Students have to care about their story in order for the process to be meaningful to them and their families. When I reflected on the kinds of stories students had to share about their lives, I realized the colorful patterns and different threads that emerged. It wasn’t easy for students to share their personal lives, and not everyone was ready to take that leap into the unknown. For some, it was a need of sorts to express themselves, communicate a message to others, and let people know who they were. For others, it was a burden and a source of discomfort to be so open with people to whom they were vulnerable. I had hoped that by setting up a strong classroom culture that sharing would become natural and easy for all of my students. However, students shared the stories at the level they felt comfortable.
Different Strokes for Different Folks
When it came down to the types of stories kids wanted to tell, I found from my focus group the rewards and drawbacks to telling a personal story. According to them, subjects for stories that were more personal were about death and divorce. Stories that were less personal were about injuries. Lauren shared, “Some people wrote about injuries and that to me is not really as personal as like other people writing about divorces or somebody dies in their family.”
John continued, “I like that people open up and share personal things, but I don’t want them to get too personal cause I don’t want to know every single part of their life. I don’t want to get too personal.”
As I listened to what these students had to say about what makes a story more personal, it seemed as though they connected sharing of difficult moments in life to be more exposing and personal. Moments of happiness, memories of good times, stories of achievements and dreams didn’t strike them as the most personal stories. However, these types of stories helped the students learn more about each other in a different way. There are many different stories that will emerge when doing a project like this, and as I discovered, each one will surprise you, give insight into your student, and teach you something that is important to them.
Give Kids a Reason to Share their story
Getting them to think about people in their lives who have stories was an important step in the process of finding their story. Many students realized that their family members had a great affect on their lives and made meaningful subjects for telling stories. For some, they connected the loss of a family member to their own lives. For others, they wanted to express an homage to a family member who made a difference. These stories led students not only to think about their subjects but also about their audience. For some students, knowing that family would be watching their stories helped them formulate reasons to share.
In asking students to reflect on what they would gain from the process of sharing their story and what they hoped others would gain, I found that every student’s comfort level varied for different reasons. Below are some comments from students that help to highlight what they hoped they, and their audience, would gain through sharing their stories:
Expressing oneself-“I really don’t know anyone better than I do myself.”
Communicating a feeling-“I missed my friends so I wanted to make a story about them.”
Gaining release-“Well for me I really wanted to tell this story, because I really want to get this off my back.”
Sharing a Meaningful story-“Well I knew I wanted to tell the story of my friend because it’s meaningful and people can connect their same story to it.”
Providing Inspiration-“I wanted to let people know that if you try your best and believe in yourself, you will most likely get what you want.”
Communicating a Message-“I wanted to share with people that people die and you just have to live with the fact that they are going to die and you can’t do anything about it.”
Sharing personal stories is scary, but it doesn't have to be
“These digital stories, I know a lot of people didn’t want to get too personal but like if you want to be a person that is stuck in a shell all your life, that’s kind of not a great life.”-John
Students are taking risks to tell their story. The more personal the story, the bigger the risk. Even those who were proud of their stories had anxiety about showing them. John took the brave step of going outside his own personal comfort zone to share a story he described as “deep and dark from my past.” Although it wasn’t easy for him to express this story, he felt a need to dig deeper and share a big part of his life.
If I was to do this project again, I would tell students, “You’re going to experience a slight discomfort throughout this process. But, trust me, it will all be okay! We’re all in it together and you’ll be glad you did.” Yes! Sharing is scary! I didn’t realize at the beginning how much some students would want to open up and how much others would resist it. For some, the story is just under the surface, for others it’s burning to get out, and for a few it is still evolving.
Supporting Students to go Beyond their Comfort Zone
I realize now how important it is to get kids to explore their personal lives and be willing to share who they are and what matters to them with their peers. Middle school is an awkward time of social acceptance, self discovery, growing pains, and life lessons. I knew it would not be easy for students adjusting to a new school and new friends to share deep and personal stories with each other. But, I had to try! The motivation was strong for me to give students an opportunity to self-reflect, open up, and let us into their lives. Learning to share a personal story with others not only had the potential to create greater empathetic bonds between students but it also grounded students in a sense of themselves and their life history.
Lauren was a student who taught me to be persistent in helping kids to share something personal, even if it isn’t easy. She expressed in a focus group interview, “some of the digital storytelling projects were very emotional. My project was one of those because I didn’t really want to share this topic, because I thought it was too revealing, but I did because some people didn’t know that about me.” After screening her story, she felt proud and shared that it is important to “impact your family in a good way.”
In Lauren’s case, it took a little pushing and prodding to get her to be open and completely honest with her feelings in her writing. Through one-on-one conversations, and my insistence that students tell a story that they care about, many students ended up sharing deeply personal stories. If I hadn’t been able to push Lauren to step just outside of her comfort zone and say what was on her mind, she might have told a story about her first roller coaster ride and never have discovered something about herself through the process. In the end, she learned that she can tell a personal story and become comfortable sharing herself with others. She also learned that the value of sharing a story that came from her heart made a greater impact on her family. As a result, she felt a sense of accomplishment and success in sharing her story.
I would want Lauren’s triumph to be everyone’s experience, but it simply doesn’t work out that way. There are students who, for various reasons, aren’t ready to step outside of their comfort zone and express who they are to their peers. It’s not a bad thing, but in the end, the evidence shows a lack of positive results in these cases. For students who don’t explore their personal side, there is a lack of heart in the story and these students tended to feel less satisfied with the process. However, it's important to realize that this is not a failure. One student's inability to share now might emerge later as a desire to share in the future. I think the best thing to do is keep an open mind and to be encouraging. Whatever students have to share is a forward step in gaining the confidence it takes to be open with others.
Supporting Empathetic Connections Through Sharing and Critique
Studies show that there is a decline in empathy amongst today’s college aged students (Kolrath et all, 2010). When I read this article, it made me feel a sense of urgency to do something to change this trend. It worried me that it would only get worse unless kids were encouraged at a young age to understand each other. I wanted to start with my middle school students and encourage sharing our stories to help reverse this fate. As students shared stories, I wanted to know, was the process of sharing stories of their lives helping students to be more aware and empathetic towards each other? Would telling and sharing personal stories help students recognize and understand each other’s life circumstances and experiences better?
During the critique process, I found that students were making empathetic connections to each other. When students read their scripts, screened their rough cuts of the movies, and discussed feedback, different comments emerged. I transcribed videos of the critique process and found that students thought others were brave for sharing, they related to each other’s stories to their own experiences, and gave helpful feedback on the construction of the digital story. In one screening critique, a student offered support and admiration for another students’ efforts when he said, “I thought it was really brave that you put your own voice on there because a lot of people are afraid to put their own voice on there.” Every student had to make a voiceover of their story script, and for many this was the hardest part of the process. The students found ways to empathize not only with subject matter but also with the digital storytelling process.
Giving kids a chance to share how they relate to each other’s stories is important in reinforcing an empathetic culture. Lauren remarked during a critique of one story about friendship, “I can relate to your story because...coming here [to HTMMA] I kind of went away from all my friends, but I made a lot more friends than I did there in five years in two weeks here.” Many comments during our critiques started with, “I can relate to you because...” I felt that the hard work that went into building a supportive community for sharing made a huge difference in their relationships with each other.
Risks of Sharing
“I felt like everyone should have done a personal story, because when people didn’t do personal stories I felt that the people who didn’t were the ones who were mean and those people that are mean um were targeting the people that did personal stories.”-Tim
The issue of meanness and bullying emerged as a surprising limitation in the project. The topic came up during my last focus group interview about three months after the project had ended. One student remarked that “the digital story project did make some kids a little bit meaner. I mean some people, it made them have a motive for speaking to other people about their lives and stuff like that. I’m kind of one of those people because I don’t like to talk about my feelings that much.” Although the risks of sharing are important to take into consideration when doing this project, I heard this problem represented by a small population of students. I didn’t have a chance to find evidence of this beyond what the students were saying. Overall, the benefits and impacts of sharing outweighed the dissatisfaction that some students experienced. However, it does reinforce the importance of setting norms as a community. In order to prevent bullying in the future, I hope to emphasize the importance of sharing as a way to build empathy and understand each other. Although this was an outcome I hoped for, I don’t think I explicitly told this to the kids as a class. I hope to make it a clear goal for everyone in our community to share stories as a way to build empathy.
The more personal the story, the greater impact it can have on the storyteller and the audience
When I asked students to describe the impacts their stories made, Tim said that after sharing his movie with a family member, “once they watch the movie, they can remember that time and everything.” I interviewed another student who was making a digital story for her mom after the project had ended. She shared with me her motivation to make another story: “I can’t just explain it all in words, how much pain I was in, how much I love my mom for helping me through it, my family. I thought instead of just telling her about it, I could make like a video.”
These impacts on storytellers and their families share another part of the digital storytelling project that I hoped would emerge. I wanted the stories to be real, to come from kids’ hearts, to share moments in their lives, and to create an empathetic community. What happened was that many students found ways of expressing memories, experiences, and messages that had dramatic impacts on family members.
I highly recommend hosting a final exhibition screening of the stories as a necessary piece of the whole project. Without an invitational screening, students are shut off from the experience of sharing something personal and impacting the people closest to them. For family members who are the subjects of the stories, they benefit from watching what the students have to share. To keep a safe sharing space throughout the process, I believe it’s important that the invited audience stay intimate. As students experience sharing stories from telling a partner, to sharing in small groups, to a class screening and finally to an invited audience, they have many chances to become more comfortable sharing with a larger audience who is invested in learning their stories.
Although stories varied in how they impacted others, sharing them as a community made every voice heard. As I move towards the implications of my study, I want to encourage that voice in all of us to emerge. As educators we can provide opportunities to enrich our communities by understanding the people in them. Through storytelling, I saw students come together, learn to share, express themselves and what’s important to them, and find anaudience who could empathize with their life experiences.
Implications
Creating a Supportive Story Telling Community in Schools
In setting up the culture for storytelling it’s important to understand that your students come to you with varying degrees of comfort in sharing. Letting kids know that they will be given a chance to express themselves takes trust in everyone. The most important aspect of setting up this culture was providing many opportunities to share, by starting small and ending up with the story they most want to share.
In thinking about your own students, mine tended to be in one of three categories:
Students who wanted to share a personal story
Students who were pushed to tell a personal story
Students who didn’t want to share a personal story
Storytelling activities should get more complex as sharing becomes a routine in your classroom. I began with activities that centered around getting to know students names, having them introduce themselves to me and each other, setting expectations, sharing computers, working with buddies, and sitting in a circle so they could feel connected as a class. If I was to start again, I would definitely take time to do all of these and remember to build slowly.
I feel the same slow build should happen in the storytelling process as well. As students become more comfortable sharing themselves with each other, they need to start thinking about the stories they feel comfortable sharing. Partnering up for interviews helped students learn more about each other. Teachers could build on these interviews to help students identify story ideas. Reflecting through the life road map activity (Appendix D) also helped students internalize life events over time and can highlight moments that defined their path. Sharing these ideas in the early stages can help students open up and find that story they might want to tell. For some students, they will have clear ideas and be ready to go, but for others it may take time.
One aspect of the process that I did not share with students at this point but wish I had was to think about how to tell the story visually. Many students developed stories that were difficult to show. Some had to reenact moments from the past and some had trouble finding images to relate to their writing. Students adapted and found creative storytelling methods, but many struggled to find pictures to match their words. If I had started the process earlier in having them think about the visuals to accompany their stories, I think they might have had an easier time in that part of the process.
Once students have their story, the movie making process begins and the critique along the way helps it evolve into the digital story they will share at exhibition. As students develop what story they want to tell, its important to give them moments to reflect on why they want to tell the story and with whom they would like to share the story. Thinking about the reasons for sharing gave my students an opportunity to reflect on the heart of the story and the purpose for choosing that particular story. At this time, I nudged some students to go deeper with their story ideas, or gave them a chance to change their story after reflecting on other story possibilities.
In the end, the storytelling process will be slightly different for every student involved, but the steps to foster this development are helpful and can lead to beautiful stories! I feel digital storytelling has impacted my teaching and approach to community building, and I hope that through my project, other educators find the joy of creating and sharing digital stories with their students.
What you can do to get started now
Set your class up for sharing-
-Have a circle of chairs when reflecting as a whole class community.
-Create partnerships to help students have a sounding board for their story ideas, encourage teamwork, and help students be accountable to someone other than themselves or the teacher.
-Construct activities from sharing with one person, then a small group, then to the whole class, then to a public audience.
Encourage many brainstorm activities to identify and share stories
-Use life road maps for student reflection to help the story brainstorm process.
-Have students conduct partner interviews to encourage talking to each other and getting to know one another.
-Have a gallery walk for sharing their brainstorms and promoting learning about other classmates.
Collaborate with a Humanities teacher who has the time to help students find the heart of the story, add figurative language and descriptive details, and frequently workshop the final scripts
-By collaborating with another teachers on the story process, I found students were much more able to express what they wanted to share in a meaningful and vivid way.
Offer opportunities to revise and change the story idea
-Engage in conversation with students
-Push them to the edge of their comfort if they seem ready and willing
Let students know ahead of time that they will need photos to help tell their story or start being creative about the re-telling through images.
Celebrate each other’s stories
-Help students build empathy through sharing stories and encouraging kind, helpful, specific critique.
-Have a screening and invite families to join in!
-Most of all, have fun and honor everyone for sharing their voice!
In setting up the culture for storytelling it’s important to understand that your students come to you with varying degrees of comfort in sharing. Letting kids know that they will be given a chance to express themselves takes trust in everyone. The most important aspect of setting up this culture was providing many opportunities to share, by starting small and ending up with the story they most want to share.
In thinking about your own students, mine tended to be in one of three categories:
Students who wanted to share a personal story
Students who were pushed to tell a personal story
Students who didn’t want to share a personal story
Storytelling activities should get more complex as sharing becomes a routine in your classroom. I began with activities that centered around getting to know students names, having them introduce themselves to me and each other, setting expectations, sharing computers, working with buddies, and sitting in a circle so they could feel connected as a class. If I was to start again, I would definitely take time to do all of these and remember to build slowly.
I feel the same slow build should happen in the storytelling process as well. As students become more comfortable sharing themselves with each other, they need to start thinking about the stories they feel comfortable sharing. Partnering up for interviews helped students learn more about each other. Teachers could build on these interviews to help students identify story ideas. Reflecting through the life road map activity (Appendix D) also helped students internalize life events over time and can highlight moments that defined their path. Sharing these ideas in the early stages can help students open up and find that story they might want to tell. For some students, they will have clear ideas and be ready to go, but for others it may take time.
One aspect of the process that I did not share with students at this point but wish I had was to think about how to tell the story visually. Many students developed stories that were difficult to show. Some had to reenact moments from the past and some had trouble finding images to relate to their writing. Students adapted and found creative storytelling methods, but many struggled to find pictures to match their words. If I had started the process earlier in having them think about the visuals to accompany their stories, I think they might have had an easier time in that part of the process.
Once students have their story, the movie making process begins and the critique along the way helps it evolve into the digital story they will share at exhibition. As students develop what story they want to tell, its important to give them moments to reflect on why they want to tell the story and with whom they would like to share the story. Thinking about the reasons for sharing gave my students an opportunity to reflect on the heart of the story and the purpose for choosing that particular story. At this time, I nudged some students to go deeper with their story ideas, or gave them a chance to change their story after reflecting on other story possibilities.
In the end, the storytelling process will be slightly different for every student involved, but the steps to foster this development are helpful and can lead to beautiful stories! I feel digital storytelling has impacted my teaching and approach to community building, and I hope that through my project, other educators find the joy of creating and sharing digital stories with their students.
What you can do to get started now
Set your class up for sharing-
-Have a circle of chairs when reflecting as a whole class community.
-Create partnerships to help students have a sounding board for their story ideas, encourage teamwork, and help students be accountable to someone other than themselves or the teacher.
-Construct activities from sharing with one person, then a small group, then to the whole class, then to a public audience.
Encourage many brainstorm activities to identify and share stories
-Use life road maps for student reflection to help the story brainstorm process.
-Have students conduct partner interviews to encourage talking to each other and getting to know one another.
-Have a gallery walk for sharing their brainstorms and promoting learning about other classmates.
Collaborate with a Humanities teacher who has the time to help students find the heart of the story, add figurative language and descriptive details, and frequently workshop the final scripts
-By collaborating with another teachers on the story process, I found students were much more able to express what they wanted to share in a meaningful and vivid way.
Offer opportunities to revise and change the story idea
-Engage in conversation with students
-Push them to the edge of their comfort if they seem ready and willing
Let students know ahead of time that they will need photos to help tell their story or start being creative about the re-telling through images.
Celebrate each other’s stories
-Help students build empathy through sharing stories and encouraging kind, helpful, specific critique.
-Have a screening and invite families to join in!
-Most of all, have fun and honor everyone for sharing their voice!
