Monday, May 21, 2018

Why Storytelling?

I've been wondering how come I've written so little about Storytelling, considering it is probably the invisible thread that connects my career and, more importantly, that I believe it to be humanity's pre-installed operating system.

But it is not that I haven't written about Storytelling. I have. Heaps. I have just not done much formal writing.

I am doing some serious e-decluttering and I am coming across a lot of stuff I have written for different purposes. Even a few journal entries I started at a moment when I thought that I might start typing instead of filling notebooks, but that's beside the point.

For someone who has not written much about storytelling, I have written enough. The favourite bit of what I've come across so far is this, which I wrote in an abstract a couple of years ago:


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Storytelling is the most natural way of provoking thought and reflection, communicating ideas, and sharing emotions and knowledge with one another. There is reason to believe that people have told stories to one another, for as long as humanity has had speech.   Sharing stories helps enhance virtues such as empathy and compassion, heals emotional wounds, fosters human connection, provokes thought and reflection, promotes global mindedness, makes us care for others and our environment. Research shows that children who know their family history have stronger self-esteem than those who don’t.   Storytelling also complements the school curriculum by improving literacy and communication skills. It is also beneficial for language learning/acquisition and a convenient resource for differentiated education. It is to be hoped that as they recognize its  invaluable benefits, schools and parents will engage more in storytelling and reclaim the essence of human relationships. (April 28, 2016)

That's pretty much my creed.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

About Home and School Relationships


The relationship between home and school is one that occupies my mind a lot. Parents and teachers, who represent the  partnership that will be the most influential in a child's upbringing, often establish relationships of competition instead of collaboration.

My method of observation is informal, but my universe is quite ample. Workshop attendees (parents and teachers!), school leaders, siblings, friends, and occasionally strangers. Argentina, Croatia, China, Emirates. Public and private schools.

Parents feel judged by teachers, and teachers feel judged by parents. Everybody seems to have different ideas about what job is whose, and very few seem to establish relationships of mutual support.

I do not intend to assign blame. That's philosophising backwards in time, and I don't see the point right now. However engaging that exploration might be, it would not be constructive.

While I am not pointing fingers at either "party", I do assign responsibility. Isn't it undeniable that there is only one side of this pair that comprises people who are professional educators? Isn't it part of the school's job to teach parents to consider the teacher as an essential partner in their child's education?

Schools seldom train their teachers in effective parent-teacher communication, and they are certainly deficient in providing education for the parents. How many schools have their teachers do lectures for parents? How many schools have an open-door policy? Are parents bringing their professional and personal strengths into school activities? Or are they only invited to watch performances that show little of what the children do day to day?

Are schools effectively communicating their mission, and the why they do things the way they do them? Wouldn't we all be better off if schools were working relentlessly to communicate their mission and realise it on a daily basis?

School is often the first experience of the world beyond the family circle, both for the children and their grown ups in their new role of parents. The effort to build a relationship of trust and mutual respect, and the agreement of acting always in the child's best interest should be a basic pact, and it is the school's responsibility to initiate it and create the community culture that will promote strong home-school ties.

So while I will "defend" teachers with might and main, here is something where  positive action is mainly in their hands. Go talk to parents about the illusions that make your eyes spark. Bring them on to your vision and make it happen!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Here's an idea! 💡

I am drafting a manifesto for an awesome project I am involved in, and seeking inspiration I returned to Iceland's Core Manifesto.

I urge you to read it. It is a faith boost. For a sneak peek, here's the very first bit:

We wish to build a community in which people both can and want to use their skills to the fullest. It is important to ensure stability in economics and to maintain trust in politics and the government’s institutions. We only engage in factual debates and contribute to decent polity with an emphasis on transparency and good morals.
Public interest instead of private interest. Each individual, home and company shall be treated equally.
Natural resources belong to the entire nation. They are to be used sensibly and paid for in quotation.
It goes on. Really awesome. It sparked one of my idealistic ideas. Tell me if you think it is implementable! I think it is a good draft :)

Citizens and residents pay taxes. In the best systems, they pay taxes in proportion to their wealth and income, so let's assume we are in one of those, or trying to get there.

Suppose that for each citizen we combined the following data:
  • taxes paid
  • positive impact of job (for example teachers, caregivers, health workers, public servants, etc, would rank higher than other occupations)
  • services rendered to the community (like volunteering, being a student, support of xx initiatives, etc)
  • you probably get my drift. 
The data would combine (algorithm?) and create a category or percentage number representing the value that an individual contributes, not exclusively through money, but through habits and occupation.

So every tax payer would be in a category of contribution that would translate into how much they are charged when using public resources. Why would a tax-paying teacher pay the same price than a foreign tourist to enter a National Park in their own country? Or use public transport, for that matter?

The benefit alone might encourage people to contribute responsibly, and be an incentive to go the extra mile to support and add value to their communities.

Call me naive, but I believe not much stands between our reality and a social pact like the proposed above. One of them is our reluctance to acknowledge that mediocrity is self-determined and starts with low aspirations; another one is that we lack a few more believers with the ambition to work for the public interest, rather than just for themselves.