From the beginning of language, humans have told stories to communicate the past and current learnings, to explain the world around us, and to connect and comfort.

They tell others who we are, where we are from, what we believe, and about the experiences that shape us. We learn empathy, lessons about friendships and possible dangers. Our stories teach and inspire.

The Burnaby District Public Speaking Competition has changed direction this year. Since I was in grade 7, the routine has been that we are assigned a topic to write about–in my year the topic was… T-SHIRTS.  Somehow I made it to the district semi-finals, but I have no recollection of what I spoke about on this topic for 3 to 5 minutes. In more recent years the topics have provided greater flexibility with themes such as “I may be young, but…” (students mainly wrote about what youth are capable of and what change they wanted to see), and “Pursuit of Happiness” (students mainly wrote about what happiness means to them, the importance of happiness, etc).

Now the model has shifted from the provision of a topic, to an invitation to students to share an authentic moment from their lives. Students will choose a story from their lived experience to retell to their peers. In Writer’s Workshop, we have been writing lived experience stories since the beginning of the year, with focus on strategies such as Zoom In, Descriptive Detail, and Show Don’t Tell. We will  build our speeches based on the stories from our lives, and ensure we integrate these strategies that strengthen our writing. Often the stories from our lives have embedded lessons, and by reflecting on our experiences we can sometimes deduce these lessons through hindsight. Something else that is new this year is that students are also able to use audio-visual supports! This makes me think of TedTalk-style presentations, so I am really looking forward to hearing what our students come up with. I think that we will see a greater variety of speeches, and what a wonderful opportunity to practice our storytelling and learn about each other.

A last week we read the story, “A Promise is a Promise,” by Michael Kusugak and Robert Munsch. Michael Kusugak is an Inuit storyteller who tells the story of the Qallupilluit who live under the sea ice and snatch children who venture too close to the cracks in the ice. We discussed what we could learn about the Inuit through the story, as well as what function a story such as this might have within his community.

Michael Kusugak shares information about himself and his family, his relationship with the land, and his culture through these stories. Here are a few videos about Michael Kusugak and storytelling.