As opposed to my last post, about the worst day of my pre-internship, this post will be about a more positive experience. Ironically, it also comes from Creative Writing 20, but doesn’t deal with writing at all. My partner had wished to do lessons with the class about oral literacy, and the importance of listening. She had begun to notice the week prior that students were not listening attentively when we were sharing pieces we had written, and she wanted to do something about this. So on Monday, she had a lesson about the historical importance of oral storytelling, and on Tuesday we had a guest come to speak about their tradition and we had a talking circle.
It was during the circle that we experienced one of the most powerful experiences of the pre-internship. It was a risk to do the circle; we didn’t know what the students were going to tell us. We didn’t know if the students were comfortable enough with us to tell us the stories from their lives, or even talk to us at all. But, the circle began, and it was very surprising.
I was the second person to tell a story, and I decided to tell an emotional story from my life. As a teacher, I have been told many times about the importance of modeling skills to students, and I decided to model telling an emotional story to the class. The story I decided to tell dealt with the night my father had a terrible injury, and how he spent the nest year in hospital recovering. This was a very emotional story for me to tell, and I even cried in front of the class. I don’t know if it was professional for me to do this, but I think my emotional outburst helped the class. I wanted the class to be comfortable with the idea of telling us more uncomfortable stories, and I believe that my crying I was able to tell the class it was ok if they wanted to share something more personal. And, some of the students did decide to tell the group a more personal story from their life, and it was a powerful experience because of it.
Later in the day, my partner and I were sitting in the faculty lounge when one of the teachers in the school came over and spoke with us. She told us how one of our students was in her homeroom, and he spent most of the class talking about how much he enjoyed the talking circle. Apparently, this student loved the circle, and the teacher wanted to tell us about the impact it had on him. I never imagined when we decided to do the talking circle that it would have an impact on anyone. Actually, I was worried that no one would want to talk. But, knowing that doing this activity actually spoke to some of the students was the most rewarding part of the pre-internship, and that experience will stay with me for a long time.
Jordan Halkyard's Portfolio 