WE ARE OUR STORIES

Story was my groups assigned sense, so in my mind it is the best! As I was reading the chapter I found it impossible to not make connections to my teaching style. From the very beginning, Pink demonstrated how difficult it is to recall facts versus how much easier it is to recall information from a Story. I found out very early on with my elementary students that they didn't remember anything I said or taught them if I didn't tell a story with it. Sometimes it was a story that related to me, but most of the time I found a way to relate it to them so they could really make connections to what I was teaching that day.

I was also intrigued by the "Hero's Journey." I had never thought about how almost every story, especially epic tales, all have the same Departure, Initiation, and Return. It made me think about the different journeys I've made throughout my life, and I was glad when my group decided to have everyone share their journeys to becoming an art teacher and then use that for our art making activity. It is amazing how creating a visual to go along with a story can give it even more importance and significance. They only thing I think could have made it even more interesting is when we had everyone turn to their neighbor and briefly tell their story, if we would have had them tell their story on 50 words or less; what Pink called a Mini Saga.

As Pink says when he talks about buying a bottle of wine, it was the story of the wine makers that made him buy that particular bottle (maybe it was a wine mini saga!). I immediately thought of all of the products I have bought for the same reason, either a great story or interesting packaging. Story really is all around us. Pink once again ended the chapter with a fantastic quote that sums that thought up.

We are our stories. We compress years of experience, thought, and emotion into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell to ourselves.