Both personally and professionally the sabbatical leave allotted me time. It allowed me to explore a topic that had very personal ties and connect it into my professional world. Taking a story that taught me many life lessons made me reflect upon story-telling in general and its capacity for it to be a tool that can connect, teach, and open our minds to new people, cultures, races, and over-all life lessons. I began thinking about the nature of teaching and what we do as educators and, when within the institutional walls, we sometimes forget in the midst of all our other responsibilities as public educators that we are all telling stories. In general, the students passively sit and listen and apply these stories on tests, essays, etc. What if the students were actively engaged in these stories? What would they learn? How would it be different if they actively listened to stories of their choosing, stories that enlightened them, changed them, affected them in some profound way? What if they took those stories and put them together to then discover their lessons and teach others about their discoveries, what these stories that affected them can teach others, what lessons are hidden in each story?Comments are closed.
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Anna C.Instructor of Italian language and culture at OPRFHS Archives
June 2016
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