Class #1 - Monday Jan. 9th

Week 1

          Today's drama class had us exploring the strategy of storytelling. Storytelling is a strategy that is central to Indigenous culture and traditions. The strategy of storytelling is something that I don't have any experience with and so when our instructor began storytelling I didn't see it's benefits. As the story progressed and we began taking part in the lesson, it was interesting to see how each person in the class was completely captured and engaged by the story. When we were encouraged to take part in the story, I could truly see how this strategy can benefit all students of every age.
          To begin speaking, each person needed to have the talking stick in their possession. Within many Indigenous cultures, the talking stick gives voice to an individual as a communication tool. While in possession of the talking stick, other members of the community must listen quietly and be respectful of the person talking. The first thing that I thought of when I saw this, was how the talking stick encourages such learning skills and work habits as self-regulation and cooperation. Another great thing about the talking stick was that it didn't put pressure on anyone to speak. If you wished to have your voice heard, you had to make the decision to take the stick and speak.

Native Arts Trading. "Native American Talking Stick". [Online Image] Retrieved from http://www.nativeartstrading.com/images/DSCN_Talking_StickA.jpg. January 10th 2017.

          When someone took it upon themselves to speak, the first thing that we were encouraged to do was role play. An individual from the class came up to the front and had to tell the community what had happened to them as a main character from the story. This task also encouraged the entire class, including the speaker to use such comprehension strategies as summarizing and sequencing to identify various components of the story and to tell those components in order. Later on in the storytelling lesson we had to employ the comprehension strategies of inferring and predicting to determine who we thought a particular character in the story was and what they're intention might be towards the other main characters. What I liked most about this process was that we weren't told we would be using comprehension strategies, we just did it and it happened from the very beginning of the story with visualizing. Throughout the entire story I was visualizing and forming images of what was happening and I can still recall those images almost a week later. It is a powerful form of teaching.
          The most powerful moment that I experienced from this lesson happened at the end of the story. The conclusion had a happy ending and a sense of justice for the main characters who were wronged. It presented an emotion in all of us that was righteous and encouraged a strong sense of morality. You could see in the faces of those sitting in the circle that we all wanted the evil character to perish and for the good characters to find redemption. What I didn't expect to happen was that this story was not only teaching a strong sense of values but was explaining something biological. At the end of the story, the guardian of the children was a loon and she was presented with a white necklace made from the tusk of a narwhal whale that had once been the evil witch who wronged the main characters. The loon was said to have kept the necklace for ever and never takes it off and that is why today you will still see the loon with it's white necklace markings around it's neck. I just thought that that was the most interesting explanation of something that differed from my scientific/genetic perspective that helped me to change my way of thinking just a little and to see the value in such storytelling strategies.

Miyata, Cathy. "The Origin of the Narwhal". Retrieved from drama resources week1 on sakai. January 20th 2017.