Fichas técnicas de los componentes utilizados

RATIONALE

This workshop was designed to model and engage classroom teachers in re-viewing their family experiences to find stories worth telling in hopes that they may support the students in their classrooms to do the same. Sharing our stories helps us to honestly connect with others and to celebrate diversity by recognizing both the similarities and differences in our stories. I first invited the teachers to tell a story they likely knew quite well – the story of how they got their names.

After sharing these stories with peers, the students recognized how this process enabled them to establish trust with each other. Indications of trust include teller-listener eye contact during the story. Next I demonstrated ways to shape a memory of a family member into a story by richly portraying the character, describing a wounding event or crisis that forged changes in the character and relaying ways the character used what s/he learned to resolve subsequent crises. Each student then selected a character from her/his family and developed a story, which he or she again shared in pairs. The students found that through their stories they paid tribute to family members, uncovered memories and found some lessons of value for themselves and others. I closed the workshop by demonstrating a literature-storytelling connection with a jackdaw (e.g., a collection of artifacts about a specific event, time or place) of my own family artifacts to tell the story of my family’s immigration to the United States. This jackdaw includes a book about the European village my family left, my grandfather’s passport, his citizenship papers and photos taken at the time of their immigration.

WHAT TO DO

1. Model the process by telling the story of how you got your name.

2. Class members recall stories about how they got their names.

3. Class members share name stories with a peer and listen as peers share theirs.

4. Class reports on observations.

5. Model how to build a story around a memory of a family character. For ex-ample, describe one of your family members. Describe the setting in detail and use this person’s phrases and gestures as you remember them. Describe an aspect of this person’s character that shows a willingness to change and grow. Next describe a crisis event that caused your family member to change in some way. Then tell how this family member changed. Was there a change

J.K. Dowdy and S. Kaplan, Teaching Drama in the Classroom, 119–121.

© 2011. Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

JACQUELINE PECK

in perspective? Some new learning? End your story by telling how this family member used the personal change to resolve other crises. What does this story

“sound like”?

6. Class members choose family characters and use the framework to extend the memory into a story.

7. Class members tell their stories in small groups.

8. Class reports their observations, insights.

9. Create a jackdaw to accompany one of your family stories. Use the jackdaw to tell your personal story to make the event, time period or place come alive for your students.

The table is a guide for creating a story about a family member, whether used with a jackdaw or not.

10. Guide your students to talk with their families about members who might become good stories. They may have artifacts to create a jackdaw and help tell the story.

SAMPLE

Character: Grandmother Louise Scher

Set character in real world;

Born in 1906. Grew up in W. Virginia. Moved to Cleve-land to attend Western Reserve College for Women (not sure of name – now Case).

At age 20, married a man 20 years her senior. Lived in Shaker Heights. Husband was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. Parents didn’t approve. They eloped.

Husband was hard to live with, i.e., didn’t want television in house. My grandmother (who had a job at G.E. teach-ing consumers how to use new stoves and ovens) bought a TV with her income. My grandfather left the house for three days.

My grandfather died when she was in her early 50s.

Grandma never remarried.

Became very involved in Herb Society of Cleveland and Plymouth Church in Shaker. She led the women’s fellow-ship for years. Grandma was a bit of a “know-it-all.”

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FINDING STORIES WORTH TELLING

At holidays when family gathered, we often played board games. Trivial Pursuit was a favorite. Grandma never played but she hovered, answering all the questions out loud. Always claimed how “easy” that was. We used to tease her that she sounded like Miss Piggy saying, “I knew that!”

Crisis or Wounding Event:

At age 91 Grandma left Shaker to live in Hamlet Hills retirement community in Chagrin Falls near my family.

(My Dad was her son. His only sister lives in Baltimore.) What happens to

change your char-acter’s view of the world?

Very independent until one evening after driving herself home from our house she drove through her parking lot and into the woods near her apartment where she parked the car. Not hurt in any way, but clueless that anything was wrong. Worrying about her safety (as well as others on the road) my dad took away her keys and eventually sold her car.

Lessons Learned: Grandma never forgave my dad. In the next couple of years she went from her own apartment to assisted living to the manor where she eventually died at age 96.

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