Excerpt from “The Importance of Telling Our Stories” by Rachael Freed
Narrative and storytelling are fundamentally important in education, culture and life. According to the educational psychologist, Jerome Bruner, narrative/storytelling is “about the most generic thing we have”. He argues that “Over and beyond their organising power, [narratives have an] astonishing range of uses: confessions, excuses, justifications, just to know what happened”. (Bruner, 2007)
A great example of this is provided in Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, where he encourages his students to write excuse notes for famous literary and historical figures, as a means of encouraging them to write creatively, indeed as a means of encouraging them to write at all. McCourt had found his students were writing the most wonderful and creative excuse notes, to avoid having to turn in homework. Consequently, he used their creativity in this form of written storytelling to make compelling, imaginative connections with the school curriculum.
According to Bruner, life itself is autobiographical – we are each the protagonist, the main character in our own, ontogenetic narrative. Stories provide an “Enormous amount of unification within a society”; “There is no culture in the world without stories” (Bruner, 2007).
Questions to Claims Practice: Read the excerpt from “The Importance of Telling Our Stories”, and answer the following questions using the questions to claims strategy.
1. What is one reason storytelling is important?
2. What is another reason storytelling is important?
3. What creative assignment did Frank McCourt give students?
4. Why did he give them this assignment?
5. Why do you believe storytelling is important?
Practice: Questions to Claims
Turn the following questions into claims, writing your answers in your English notebook. You do not need to actually answer the question, simply show that you know how to turn it into a claim.
Example:
Question: Why is it important to study English all four years of high school?
Claim: It is important to study English all four years of high school because...
1. What is the theme of the novel?
2. What comparison is the author suggesting in the last two lines?
3. Why is it significant to use academic language during class?
4. Who is the most influential person of the 21st century?
5. How are readers similar to the protagonist in the novel?
6. How does a person’s culture affect their identity?
7. Why are school uniforms a poor idea?
8. How has cyber bullying become a serious problem with today’s youth?
9. What are the advantages of offering technology classes?
10. How does an arts school benefit students?