Today’s big idea is to use my day-to-day teaching to practice storytelling. I am a specialist in middle school; my class is a great 9 weeks for my students. I have trouble with students losing the vision/mission as the weeks roll by. I want to develop a story or class lore that I can use to anchor the concepts and call back to. What this would look like is laying out the story for Days 1, 2, 3, etc. and I could practice performing them while I teach my five/six classes per day. At the end of the 9-week quarter, I would hopefully make the stories richer and start all over on day 1.

I spent some time fleshing this out and I am getting more and more excited about it. It could be like the book Pilgrims Progress, where the people he meets and the areas that he visits are the Christian concepts embodied. I’ve used a project cycle analogy that is similar to a rope bridge for years, this will really bring it to life.

The day that I hand out the checklist and have students check to see if they have everything completed from the first two weeks, our character could give advice to people who have everything completed and tell a story to students who are behind.

There are so many directions we can go with this, I hope that it works as well as it is working in my head tonight!

Time will tell on this idea. I’m excited to try.