The Telling Room’s Non-Negotiables
by Nick Whiston, Telling Room Staff
At The Telling Room, we hold the core belief that storytelling is a fundamental human skill, and human need. We also believe that all writing is a creative act, and that young people are natural storytellers. We get to play a role in the world of education that is free of all but our own high standards and we get to meet students as fellow writers whom we want to engage as collaborators in creative projects.
Last year, we took time to think deeply about how to define our approach to teaching and how to explain it to others. Ultimately, we give students permission to be creative, we guide and support them in their work, and we help them to share their final products with an authentic audience.
We’ve broken down these steps into several elements that make our work with students successful, and make even the most reluctant writers enjoy the challenging process of thinking and writing creatively.
1. We Enjoy What We Do
Writing, creating, teaching, and learning are not easy things to do, but this doesn’t mean the process can’t be enjoyable. We’re fortunate to work in a community of student and professional writers and artists and we do our best to celebrate that existence each day. By carrying this sentiment into our classrooms we encourage students join us on our journey and to think of the creative work they do at The Telling Room as something they get to do rather than something they have to do.
2. We Engage Volunteers
We engage a dedicated group of volunteers in all of our programs and we couldn’t do what we do without them. Volunteers make it possible to serve over 2,000 students each year. You can expect to always have volunteers with you when you teach and we encourage you to consider them a part of the teaching team and to utilize the many skills they bring to the classroom.
3. We Build Community and Create Safe Space
We’re proud to be the center of an active community of student and professional writers and artists in Maine and we carry the mission of community building into all of the spaces where we teach. Students who feel they’re a valued part of a classroom community and who feel that their voice and ideas are important are more likely to be engaged participants in the process. We create a safe space environment where respect for others is the number one rule in order to enable students to take risks that are a necessary part of creative growth.
4. We Play
We play with ideas, with form, with technique, and sometimes we just play. We do this on the learning side as well as on the teaching side, always striving to keep our work fresh and exciting by developing solid plans that make space for an emergent curriculum. In doing so we help to build the community that supports us, we discover new ways of imagining what can be, we take risks and we bring a sense of fun into the creative process of learning and teaching.
5. We Write
We are a community populated by professional writers, editors, designers, artists, and publishers and together we help students master the science of writing by engaging them in the art of writing. We ask students to think deeply about themselves and their unique perspectives on the world. We ask them to notice details, to be aware of their senses, and to observe what exists around them in a particular place or point in time. Our work is generative at first, providing multiple entry points and possible directions to a piece of writing. If the end game is a story about place we might start by asking for a physical description of the place. The next day we might ask for a list of all the sensory details associated with that place. And since we like to have fun we might ask a student to invent a super power that one gains by entering the place and how that power is used to solve a conflict.
After a student has several good starts on paper we help them to identify “the heat” and work with them to polish their writing to a point where it’s worthy of publication. In the revision process we move beyond the rush of free-flowing ideas and stress the basics. By engaging students as fellow writers practicing the art of writing, we’re able to make the case that the science of writing- spelling, word choice, sentence structure-is equally important. If we’re successful, students leave the Telling Room understanding that revising a first draft can be just as creative as writing it the first time.
6. We Integrate with Other Art Forms
From the very beginning we’ve understood that other art forms can provide effective entry points into the writing process or extensions out of it. Often this integration is a necessity. Working with beginning English Language Learners, we’ve found that students who may not be able to write a story can certainly draw one. From the drawing comes oral storytelling and from the oral storytelling comes writing and then reading or performing one’s own work. Other times the integration is by choice. We’ve worked with photographers, filmmakers, actors, songwriters, playwrights and visual artists, always pushing the boundaries of students’ ideas of what effective storytelling is and asking them to explore the “third space” that exists between disciplines. In the end, just as in the beginning, writing is our core focus. But how we get there or where we go with it, is always being reinvented.
7. We Meet Students Where They Are
The Telling Room works with over 3,000 students age 6–18 every year. Some of those students cross our threshold and say, “I am a writer, let’s write.” Others come to us because their parents think it might be a good idea and they’re at least willing to give it a try. Many students we meet are working hard to learn English as their 2nd, 3rd or 4th language or to master reading and writing in English as their native language. Occasionally we’ll meet a student who confidently declares, “I hate writing.” Regardless of where students sit on the writing spectrum, we’re ready and willing to meet them where they are. Because we engage volunteers in all the work we do, we’re able to provide close support to all students to move them forward from wherever they start.
8. We Publish and Perform for Authentic Audiences
The Telling Room mission statement states that we will “provide real audiences for our students’ stories.” We do this by publishing their work in print and digital formats, organizing gallery events for visual work, and gathering audiences for student readings and performances. We do this within the process of writing and creating-every class has moments where students share their work with others-and as culminating events where students share their finished work with an authentic audience of their peers, teachers and family members.
Want to share your response to any of our lessons? There are a few options:
- Visit https://www.tellingroom.org/stories to submit your writing!
- Send us a message on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
The Telling Room is committed to providing resources, activities, and community engagement to help people of all ages, but especially youth, keep writing and communicating across the divides created and exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be providing a variety of content on this Medium account, including: a list of write/share prompts, articles written by Telling Room staff exploring key elements of literary and language arts methodology, and a curated suite of Telling Room lessons that can be adapted for online classroom and at-home learning.
Want to learn more about The Telling Room philosophy and how we put these lessons together? Read more here! (Coming Soon!)
Instructions for how to get the most out of our lessons can be found here.
This resource would not be possible without the vital support provided by our many generous friends, donors, and funders who believe in The Telling Room, our vision, and our work! Thank you for inspiring us all — especially in this time of great upheaval across the arts and nonprofit sectors. We are so grateful!
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