We lived in the part of Riverdale that was opposite Manhattan College (which I discovered later in life was a small college when I went to Stony Brook), a subway train depot, and Gaelic Park, which was a stadium where some soccer games, some college football games and concerts were held (some of which we could see from the roof of our apartment; all of which we could hear). We were a short walk away from the end of the IRT elevated subway line, Van Cortlandt Park and a Fanny Farmer’s candy factory (which my mother worked at for a while).

As a storyteller you would think that I have many tales to share about growing up in Riverdale. I probably do, but I only recall them when I get reminded of some incident that occurred connected to something happening now. Storytelling wasn’t part of growing up as with a number of other storytellers that I have interacted with over the years. I wish it were, so I could have a better handle on where my parents came from, what they went through to get here and add a lot more non-fiction to my repertoire. All my ancestry is German. My parents and their siblings are no longer alive and my grandparents all died before I was born, so my source for generational stories, which was pretty dry to begin with, has dried up.

Luckily for me when I became a teacher I got more into storytelling and ancestry information gathering.  I managed to get some recorded stories from both my parents before they died. One of my sisters even took some videos of my mom, which she shared with all of us. The rest is up to me and digital research as the family historian. I’ve contacted a researcher in Germany that lives near where my parents’ grew up and he has given me much information about my ancestors as well as pictures. My biggest difficulty is that the German writing that was used when my parents were in Germany is no longer taught and even though I have over 100 letters that were written to my mother  and some to my father when they first came to America, very few people know how to translate the Suetterlin (old German script) that was used in them. Someday I hope to learn some german and travel to Germany to do more research. Until then I’ll keep plugging away on the web to gather more information and stick to folktales and other stories to use in my performances.

Spending time recently as a substitute teacher has allowed me to practice my storytelling craft with captive audiences that are just kids. I’ve been telling to Kindergarten and first graders as well as 4th, 5th and 6th graders. I’ve discovered that as I tell stories to these groups with no adults around, that I generally get full attention as the students get involved in my tales. I even get applause when I complete a tale. Students are excited when they see that I am going to be their teacher. I’m sure the storytelling piece is part of it.

When I perform in front of an adult audience I get similar responses; active listening and recognition from the audience when a tale ends.

The more difficult audiences are those that combine both children and adults. Unless the venue has structured the event carefully audiences don’t necessarily know how to react. A number of those family events when parents and kids come to fall into the category of a misunderstanding of what storytelling is and a misunderstanding of who’s in control of the kids. Many adults see storytelling as story reading that only is done for very young children. You see this at an event when though it is advertised for school aged children or ages 12 and up, parents come with their pre-schoolers expecting a lively read along, puppet show, costumed act or some other theater program. As some children who have not been prepared for this event attend, they can be antsy and active (putting it politely) with the parent’s assumption that the organizer or the performer doesn’t mind their children distracting the others with their cute antics. I’ve actually had a parent come stand up next to me while I was performing a song and take a picture of their child who was having a social conversation with someone right in front of me. This was right after the organizer had asked the parents to help show their children the correct way to act. I’m always unsure how to react in those situations. If the distraction is not that bad, I just keep telling or singing. I might move in the direction of the offender and make eye contact with them, to signal that their behavior needs to change. In rare cases I will stop what I’m doing to either ask the child to be less distracting or ask someone in the audience (a parent or teacher) to take care of that child. Though I don’t feel it is my role to do that, the teacher in me takes over.

When organizers of events such as these ask me how I want the audience arranged, I’ll usually state that I would like the adults to sit with their children. I point out that children need good role models for attending a performance; I encourage the adults to be such models. The worst case scenario is when the adults stand in the back talking to each other while the kids are sitting in the front attempting to listen and participate. I’m not sure who said this but, “If you are not modeling what you are teaching, you are teaching something else.” is very apt in this case.

I’m not sure if it is that there are adults and kids in the room and both groups expect the other groups to lead the way or if both groups are just not familiar with audience protocol when attending a storytelling concert. I find that though I may get applause and recognition for the first tale I tell; subsequent tales end in a sort of limbo where neither child nor adult knows quite what to do. “I’ve applauded the first story, do I need to do that every story and song?” “Maybe I should save my applause for the conclusion of the whole program?” “This performance is for the kids, so shouldn’t they be the ones that applaud?” “I don’t want to be the only one applauding and my parents aren’t clapping, so maybe it isn’t the right thing to do?” I’m only speculating here you get the idea. For some reason when I sing a song, they all know to react at its conclusion. Maybe its that playing the last chord of a song signals a definitive ending, whereas stories end in so many different ways.

I want to know how do we as storytellers change the perception of what storytelling can be? It can be for adults as well as kids. Adult storytelling doesn’t only have to follow “The Moth” format of competition through personal tales. It can be literary tales, folktales, historical pieces as well as personal tales. Storytelling doesn’t only have to be for one generation or another. There are many successful storytellers out there that tell to a wide variety of audiences and get a good number of people to attend. That is not the case here on Long Island. At least I haven’t found it so yet.

I also would like to know how we change or teach our audiences to appreciate the storytelling that we are offering.

Those two questions are definitely inter-related. The answers to which will certainly improve the growth of storytelling in our lives.

I spent my last two years of college as an undergraduate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook immersed in schools. With my Supervisor, Dr. Dennis Littky, I was in a classroom 4 days a week the entire semester, working with teachers that were developing curriculum, creating a new school environment, and working with students.  When I left teaching in 2006, the student teachers that I had to work with never spent a full week with me; they had seminars and classes that cut into the time they could have spent working with kids. Instead, they got to stay with me 3-4 days a week, for about 6 weeks, before they were transferred to another class in another grade for the rest of the semester. If it timed out well, I invited them to parent conferences, to sit in with me. Rarely did they get to witness a faculty meeting, due to classes they had to attend. Their main interaction with other teachers was at lunch.

As a teacher in the 70s through 90s, I was not required to spend much time on testing. The curriculum was recommended, not mandated. This allowed me to spend more time on individual units. Teaching a skill and then letting the students practice with that skill with authentic projects connected to it, without the fear of having to move on to the next topic right away before the one I just taught sunk in. If I didn’t finish the whole curriculum, though frustrating, was okay. Nowadays I don’t even know how teachers can complete all the curriculum expected of them in one year. And they are held accountable for all of it.

I used to do a math project called the $60,000 inheritance project. It took place usually just before Christmas. The students were given an inheritance of $60,000. However in order for them to get the money (tax free) they would have to spend it exactly and include certain requirements, such as a gift for every member of their family, a new car, invest for college between $10,000 and $12,000 in stocks, 2 appliances for their kitchen, toys and food for a family in need, a new outfit of clothes, etc. We spent weeks prior to this activity collecting as many catalogs for the classroom as we could (which is why I did it prior to Christmas). Students had to keep records of their purchases, in some instances make phone calls to get prices and hand everything in, in a neatly organized fashion on the due date. This three week unit, took up most of our time. Students were working on searching through materials for items they need, using calculators and later computers to verify that the things they purchased added up correctly (I had several different ways in which they had to tally their results; all which had to equal each other). In all the years that I did this project maybe 2 or 3 students out of the whole class failed to get the $60,000. It wasn’t a real check, but they worked as if it was, gaining lots of practice in skills that they would need in math, some of which were not in the curriculum. I don’t think that can be done today.

My teammate and I in the 80’s had our classes plan their own end of the year trip. The trip wasn’t necessarily in the curriculum, though one of the requirements is that it had to have some educational value. Compared to the work that they had to do to plan it the final trip was dessert. We elected one leader and 2 co-leaders (the co-leaders had to be male and female) They had to decide on a place for the trip, which required skills such as writing and phoning for information, learning about voting, parliamentary procedure, and consensus in order to make a final decision. Once they had decided on where to go, they needed to decide how to raise money to pay for it. School buses I might be able to get through our school budget, but if they wanted a coach bus, they needed more money. Were we going to eat along the way or on the way home, if it was an all day trip? Once they decided how to raise the money they had to raise it. Letters to parents and community, filling out the forms, making the phone calls through our school operator, etc. They learned how to deal with adversity, especially when they made phone calls to museums, zoos, restaurants and were told that they needed to speak with an adult. I was the facilitator and the person who submitted the final paperwork. The class had to work together for this to be a success. We started in about April and the trip was in June. There were those students that for some reason or another I had to ban from going on the trip. There were some years when the class couldn’t get it together no matter how hard we tried and the project had to be cancelled. Most of these trip plannings were successful and all the ones we went on were great.  To this day ex-students of mine remind me of what happened back then.

These were but two of the things that I would miss being able to do, if I were still in the classroom teaching. Is it the economy, the number of mandates, the new core curriculum, teacher evaluation process, or society itself that has caused these changes? I’m sure they all have a part in it. We live in a different world than when I taught back then. Are the children that are graduating now any better off than the ones that graduated 10 or 20 years ago? Time will tell. Change doesn’t have to be bad. But it is important not to forget what we had and what that allowed us to do and become.

The term used for what I did is called reflective practitioning. You can read more about what I did in my Blog entry: Time to Reflect

The one journal that was not digitized was one that was done by someone else doing the typing; at a time where word processors were not the prevalent way of typing. In 1987, our district embarked on a project called the Computer Infused Classroom (CIC). One class in each of the 5 buildings in our district were to pilot this program, whereby we were given 1 computer for every 2 students in our class. Until that time the most computers in a classroom was 3.  I was selected as the pilot teacher for the 5th grade in my building, Miller Avenue. Each school got to pick their own manufacturers of computers. Briarcliff and Miller Avenue (both elementary schools) choose Apple computers (I picked the Apple //e and Briarcliff the Apple //gs (which had just come out). Wading River (the other elementary school) chose Apple Macintoshes (also new). The middle school chose IBM PCs and the high school chose Atari computers. As part of the project each of the teachers involved had to keep journals of the experience. Our district superintendent, gave each of us micro-cassette recorders which were supposed to be used as frequently as possible, recording our thoughts. Each week or so we would send the tapes to the district office where a secretary transcribed our recordings using a typewriter. We received these typed journals to keep.

Being that I was already used to reflective practitioning, making daily recordings was easy to do. By the end of the year I had a journal of over 250 pages, which I bound and kept. This is the only copy of this journal as it was not saved digitally. I also kept my own written journal for that year. Not everything that I wished to reflect upon had to do with the CIC and there were aspects of my teaching and class that I didn’t feel needed to be shared publicly, which my CIC journal was.

I’ve often wanted to re-read all of my journals. I’m sure there is enough information in them to write a book. The year after I retired I began to read them again. For some reason I never finished, fascinating as they were. I periodically read pieces of them, as an ex-student friends me on Facebook, or I’m writing a piece and want to recall an event, but in general the printed copies remain on my bookshelf and the digital ones remain on my laptop and iPad.

I did recently re-read the entire CIC journal. I was elected as the chairperson of our district’s Technology Committee. In a week I get to give a presentation to the Board of Education to ask for new technology to upgrade our infrastructure to meet today’s needs (77% of our computers are 5-11 years old). In preparing to speak before the Board I thought it would be interesting to read the journal that I wrote when our district was just exploring increasing computers in education. I was fascinated by what I read. As I described the daily attempts at using technology and support needed there was a direct correlation to what is happening now. Granted that the technology has drastically changed in the last 25 years, but the issues have not: technology not performing as expected, administrivia that slows down the progress and excitement for both students and teachers, the lack of knowledge of not only what’s out there, but fear of not having the skills or equipment necessary to utilize what we have, and the big one – Time to learn.

Reflective practitioning allowed me to come up with innovative workarounds to accomplish non-linear, creative thinking in my students. It allowed me to adapt to the new technology culture and build upon my own strengths. I’m hoping that what I learned over time gives me enough solid arguments to convince the Board to invest in the technology and support necessary to bring our district into the present and prepare for the future. If not, I guess I’ll have to reflect some more.

In high school I was taught that good speakers should just conclude naturally and not need a pronouncement. Stating that you are about to conclude is superfluous. However that is not always the case. In some formal situations such as presentations and speeches I’ve noticed that there are a number of catch phrases and words that creep in to talks as a signal to the listener that the end is near. Some of these are very straight forward, as in: “In conclusion…” or “Let me finish by saying…” These ending clues though informative to the listener are unnecessary. I must admit that they are sometimes welcome and needed. If I’m totally bored with what you are saying and you’ve been droning on for a while, announcing that the end is coming gives me something to look forward to – immediate relief.

But how about informal conversations. Listen to yourself and others when talking and see if there are key words that pop up when you are interacting either in person, on the phone, or through another audio/video device (Skype comes to mind).

In my family the word is “anyway.” If you are in a conversation and there is a lull in the talk and the word “anyway” comes up, you know there is nothing left to say and “Goodbye” is coming soon. I don’t think we intentionally do it, but at this point it is a habit and will always comes up before we end our conversations.

I’m sure we say other things, but “anyway” stands out like a tune you can’t get out of your head. Once you’ve noticed it, it’s hard to miss. Sort of like the arrow in the Fed Ex sign.

Anyway, that’s about all I can think of to write about today. If you have any different words/phrases that you use, I’d be interested in hearing them.

My desire was to leave out some food for the birds that would be appreciated and consumed at a reasonable rate. I looked forward to watching this occur. This was not the case as our community allowed animals to exist whose sole purpose in life was to thwart whatever means I had to restrict and provide that feeding.

The set up that we had in our backyard had been a hanging feeder with seeds and a feeder on a pole. We had a tree stump in the back where I attached a squirrel feeder to hold squirrel logs of compressed corn. For the most part that seemed to work fine. Over time the stump continued to decay and be a nuisance in the middle of our backyard, the pole feeder got in the way of our access to the backyard and also left a bare spot on the ground below it. The hanging feeder began to show its age so we took all the feeders down. All was quiet for a while, but we had liked the sight of all those birds in our backyard.

I made a more sturdy squirrel feeder and moved it further back in the yard on a tree that was at the edge of our property, allowing me to eventually take down the stump. We got a more decorative hanging feeder, supposedly squirrel proof and bought some suet blocks of bird food to be put in a hanging suet feed holder we had. We had thwarted animals getting at our food in the past, so we foolishly believed that we could do it again.

It was time for our well educated and tooled beasts to come into our yard. The results – I can no longer fill the hanging feeder with food. Some strong animal, usually at night, comes to the feeder, lifts it up and shakes all of food out of it onto the ground. The feeder remains hung and stands empty and the birds, squirrels and deer can now come into the yard pigging out on all the food on the ground. This does not do much for the esthetic beauty of our backyard as now it is covered in seeds all over the place and a plentitude of deer poop.

The suet feeder took real ingenuity on the part of these creatures. First they clipped the chain link that held it onto the branch it was hanging from and then took the whole feeder, food and all. It took about a week or more before I found the feeder again, somewhere back in the woods.  Since we had more blocks of suet I tried again. This time securing the chain and adding a stronger wire to hang the feeder. I needed pliers to close the links that would prevent them from unhooking it. I’m not sure what tool they used to again clip the chain and drop the feeder to the ground. This time they ate all the food, but left the feeder. My last block of suet was set into the feeder and this time I used a coat hanger with no chain and attached it to the tree. There was no way they were going to remove the feeder; and in fact they didn’t. This time they just opened the feeder and took the food out. I should note that I have trouble opening the feeder either to fill it or empty it. It had two snaps that were quite secure. My best guess is that they used a winch and a torch to open it.

It appears these well educated animals of the wild have won; or lost depending on whether you consider that they are not being fed anymore. The suet feeder is down and put away. The hanging feeder gets filled periodically as long as we still have food, but only a quarter of the way, since they tend to empty it anyway. The squirrel feeder will have corn logs put on them, but only periodically, since the squirrels tend to eat them within 2 days and we can’t afford to purchase that much food.

Until we can come up with a better plan, I guess the wildlife in our neighborhood will have to seek out other pastures. That is except the deer, since no matter what we’ve done since we’ve moved here, the deer feel that we have created a garden salad for them. When there is no bird food for them to nibble on, they manage to eat everything else we have planted, even if the reference books say that deer don’t eat those types of plants. But that is a whole other story.

All went well for a while. Bob was feeling really good about himself and was participating more in our class. I was seeing great strides in his performance. Then came the day that our Child Study Team (CST), composed of our principal, special education teachers, school psychologist, the district special education administrator, and me met with the parents to make recommendations for the following year. The recommendation was to classify Bob as a severe stutterer. What this would do, would be to guarantee that Bob would get the services he needed to help him with his handicap in the following year. The parent’s went ballistic. They did not want him labeled. They had research that showed that 80% of all stutterers grow out of their stuttering by adolescence. They were convinced that Bob was in that 80%. They also used as examples things that they had grown out of as children. They were convinced that we had lied to them and that focusing on his stuttering was detrimental to his “cure.” They insisted that all services he was receiving, which included his visits to the Primary School, and talking about his stuttering with him, were to be stopped. They closed the barn door. We had very little recourse. Pretty much all gains that I had made stopped at that point.

He was a 4th grader, so I only got to see him in our school for one more year after he left my class. I didn’t see much change before he went to the Middle School. Whether or not he did outgrow his stuttering, I have no idea, as we lost touch pretty much from the day he left my class. I hope he did well and that we were wrong, though at the time I was convinced we were headed in the right direction.

Paula was a good student. She had no handicaps or difficulties in school. I taught a 4th and 5th grade inter-age class, meaning half my class were 4th graders, the other half 5th graders. The 5th graders would graduate to the middle school, while most of the 4th graders would become 5th graders in my class as a new crop of 4th graders entered. Paula was one of my 4th graders this particular year. She was very popular. One of the projects that I did with my class starting around April was called trip planning. It was the task of the class to plan out an end of the year trip. They had to research and decide on the venue, how we would get there, how to raise funds to offset some of the costs, and the itinerary for the trip. My job other than facilitating all this was to make the final reservations and logistics for the actual trip. During this process the class learned a lot about making phone calls, writing letters, making decisions (by collaboration and consensus) and becoming independent planners. The first part of the process was electing three leaders to organize the whole project. One overall leader (either a boy or girl) and two assistant leaders (one boy and one girl). These leaders would meet regularly with me as their facilitator in getting tasks accomplished. Paula was one of those leaders.

She worked exceptionally hard to organize the class and get the work done that was needed to make this end of the year trip a reality. In the end, it was decided to go to the Bronx Zoo as a full day trip. There is great growth that occurs during the process of planning and implementing a trip. Remember that these students were 9-11 year-olds. The leaders gain the most, especially when it is a success. Paula was looking forward to this trip. It was her reward for a job well done. It was the weekend before the trip was to take place that I got a call from Paula’s mother, saying that Paula was in tears. She apparently broke her toe and didn’t think that she would be able to go on the trip, which would require a lot of walking, even with her mother as chaperone. I felt terrible and decided that there must be a workaround to this problem. I’m sure if this were the case nowadays, I would have called the Bronx Zoo and checked to see if they had wheelchairs available for use with Paula, however back then it never even crossed my mind. Paula was one of the taller girls in my class, even as a 4th grader, but was rather lanky and I was sure didn’t weigh that much. I spoke with her mother and convinced her that both she and her daughter should go on the trip. I said that if we couldn’t find another way, I would piggyback Paula throughout the zoo and that is exactly what we did. For most of the walking, I carried Paula on my shoulders. Her mom carried my knapsack and spelled me at times; we had a great day. I was a little sore at the end of the day, but felt really good that I had come up with a way for someone who had put her heart into planning and executing an event to be a full participant in the final product.

As I said when I began this, students are not going to tell you that any particular day is the one when you can reach them. As a teacher you have find those days; you have to find creative ways to foster those days; and you have to take the small victories as they come even if you don’t get exactly to where you want to be. That is where you get to be the one piggybacked and feeling of success. It’s why we chose to be teachers.

A few times in my teaching career, I’ve had students enter my class from foreign countries. In the case of Debby and Tommy they were both from China. Neither at the time they entered my class had any grasp of English. Luckily our school had an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher that worked with them once a day on learning the language. That meant that the rest of the time I had to communicate with them without knowing their language. With Tommy I did have the advantage of having another student in the class that did speak his language, so that helped in translating things I did. That wasn’t the case with Debby. One of the things that I had been studying at the time was American Sign Language. I wasn’t proficient enough to speak with it to people that knew it fluently, but did know it enough so that I could share those fundamentals with my class. Doing that made a major difference in the adjustment of those Chinese students to our class. The biggest obstacle in being in a class where no one speaks your language is understanding. Getting others to know what you want, and knowing what others want. Both Debby and Tommy were very reticent to try and communicate, because (in my humble opinion) they were not confident in their abilities and did not want to look out of place. ASL changed all of that. It leveled the field. No one in my class knew ASL and I taught it by infusion meaning I rarely spoke English words to correspond to ASL ones. The students learned to understand what I was saying by the context of what I was doing and what I referred to with gestures. This is where my Chinese students excelled, since they didn’t have the English the rest of my class would try and rely on to make sense of my signs. They allowed their observations to connect to words in their own language that had meaning. The more I taught ASL, the more both Debby and Tommy’s confidence grew, for they learned faster than my English speaking students. Over time, it balanced out, the Chinese students learned more English and the rest of the class had a better handle on how to communicate with the Chinese students and make them a part of the class.  By the end of the year, when I had some Silent Days (in which no one could speak for a whole day) everyone as a unit was communicating and demonstrating things that they had learned. I don’t think I could have planned it any better. Part of it was timing, part of it was luck, and part of it was making it up as I went along, because it seemed right.  I know for a fact, it wasn’t in the manual.

I’ve found that it’s the small victories that you learn the most from, are more memorable and keep you going.

As a collector of quotes, two more come to mind when I think of those years. “Challenges can be stepping stones or stumbling blocks. It’s just a matter of how you view them.” – author unknown and “What really matters is what you do with what you have.” – H. G. Wells.

I was successful for the most part as a teacher in guiding my students to be independent thinkers. But through all of those years I recall a handful of students that presented me with personalities, handicaps, and backgrounds that put me to the test of being an educator.

Here are some of those small victories. Note that the names of the students will be changed to maintain privacy.

When Anna entered my 4th grade class, I was warned that she had Downs syndrome, she didn’t speak well, in fact when she did it was usually to curse someone out, she worked at a pre-reading level, and had few life skills. She spent most of her time in the Learning Center, but was to be integrated as part of my class, for an hour or so a day, I was to have her do the activities that the rest of the class was doing. She did have her own personal teacher assistant that helped when she was in the room and all of the activities had to be adapted for her so she could participate. One of the activities I did was called “Magic Circle”. It was an activity where I would pose a topic to the class, such as “A day that I felt happy,” described what the topic meant and allowed students to share personal stories on the topic. Students sat in a circle and could share if they chose to but didn’t have to. Following the sharing we reviewed what people shared. Reviews took the form of repeating what someone else said and directing it back to the person who shared. For example, “Sally you shared that you felt happy the day your parents bought you a puppy.” The ultimate goal of this exercise, other than improving listening skills and fostering a closer bond in my class, was that each student would at some time get a chance to lead a Magic Circle. That meant that I would give them the topic, they would announce it, explain it, call on people, share if they chose to, and lead the review. It was a great program. Anna decided that she wanted to become a leader of Magic Circle. I told her that in order for her to be a leader, she had to first know the names of everyone in the class. It took until almost Christmas for her to learn the students’ names. When she led Circle it went perfectly. More kids shared than usual, she followed all the rules; the smile on her face and the positive feedback she received at its completion made my day and hers. I got through to her and she succeeded.

Marion suffered from selective mutism. For those of you that don’t know what selective mutism is, it means that the person has the ability to talk, but in certain circumstances cannot utter a sound. If you’ve ever watched the TV show, “The Big Bang Theory” one of it’s characters, Raj, suffers from selective mutism; he can’t speak to women. In Marion’s case she would not speak at all in school, with a class full of students or a teacher present. Now Marion was in my 5th grade class, meaning that she hadn’t spoken a word in 5 years. I should point out that I knew that there were students in the class that she would speak to and I tried to have them paired up as much as possible, much to the consternation of some of their parents. Marion had no problem speaking to me or other teachers on the phone.  She would call us up at home and have some lengthy chats. She was selective about school. My goal was have her talk in class. This was a lofty goal considering the length time she had not spoken out loud. She was willing to talk to her friends, when I was out of the room. So for a couple of units, one on storytelling and another a social studies project based unit, I came up with a plan that worked for her. All of the other students in the class had to do public performances of their stories or projects in front of the whole class, I set it up so that Marion could do hers privately in front of one or more select people of her own choosing during lunch, while everyone, including myself, was out of the room. I was allowed to have the friend that she was telling to videotape her performance. With this done, I could share the video of her telling the story and doing the presentation to the whole class. She could choose to stay in the class during the video presentation if she wanted to. For the first performance she opted not to be there, but for the second one she stayed. The class was amazed at the fact that she could talk! She seemed quite pleased albeit a little uncomfortable at the response.  I never got her to speak publically in front of me or the class that year or since, but what we accomplished helped both me and Marion feel successful.

There were other students that had trouble speaking in front of the class. Videotaping and the praise they received helped them overcome those handicaps. You can read more about Tracy’s achievements in my blog “Storytelling Success”: http://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=63

Each of these small victories helped me become a better teacher. It allowed me to use the creativity that I had in me to help foster learning in others. It felt good and it was fun trying to come up with ways to solve each problem.

Hopefully next time I write you’ll hear more tactics and victories: about the student who was school phobic, 2 different Chinese students who couldn’t speak any english and another student who stuttered, how I became the confidant of an overweight sixth grader, and how piggy backing a 4th grader through the Bronx Zoo helped her become part of a trip she planned. Till next time…

Then I retired. Though I’m still an educator, it is interesting that the two career paths that I am following now has changed my persona from a farmer to more of a hunter.

One of my jobs is as a part time consultant, an “educational technology integration specialist.”  That means when I’m needed, I’m sent into school districts to train other educators on how to use technology tools, such as smartboards, electronic response systems, document cameras, etc. in their teaching. I also teach some Web 2.0 tools, like podcasting, digital storytelling, and useful sites on the Internet. Sometimes I have advanced notice of who the teachers are that I’m training, but many of the times it’s an unknown school and I find out more about who I’m training when they sign in. As hunter I need to be armed with choices of weapons that can deal with the differing prey I might run into. Sort of like my first week of teaching every time I do a workshop.

My other profession is that of storyteller/singer at various venues such as schools, libraries and festivals. Other than telling at the school that I taught in for most of my career, most venues are new. Sizes of listeners and control of listeners behavior is usually determined by those that hire me, since I’m the performer, not the disciplinarian, and sometimes those people don’t even show up to the performance. Other than in school performances when I’m told how many people will attend, the predicted size of the audience is not always accurate. If I get to my venue early enough I usually can have some say as to how I want the audience to be seated. There are times when I have no control over that, so parents will chat in the back while I’m trying to perform to kids in the front, or the kids will sit by class with teachers sitting around the outside of the group, I’ll be on stage in a giant auditorium with a handful of people scattered about the entire room. At one venue I was in a banquet hall and some kids sat up front with me, but the rest all sat at giant round dinner tables around the hall with adults (talking and listening to each other at their tables was a higher priority than being quiet, participating and listening to me). Again I go into the forest with a multitude of weapons, hopeful that I have the right ones to make my hunt successful.

One difference between what I did for 33 years and what I do now, is in the amount of time that I spend with the groups that I work with. As a farmer, I was with the same product within any given year. I could cultivate, nurture and watch it grow over time. Though the first few days may have been unknown as the seeds began to germinate, I could take longer to adapt to changes that I needed to make to grow my crop.

As a hunter, I don’t know what animal I’m going to be dealing with when I enter the forest, therefore though I have the same experience of knowledge that I want to impart to my audience as I did as a farmer, I have to have quicker reactions and the support system is not always present. If I’m invited back to the same group to train or tell to it’s a little easier, because a I have knowledge of the group. Then I can reach back to my farmer days and try to build upon my relationship with that group. Even so, the group changes too rapidly; rarely have I worked with the same children or teachers more than twice in any given year. They must be released into the wild and a new group appears.

Maybe this analogy only works now because I’ve only been a hunter for a short while compared to my farmer days. As I continue to grow and gain experience in my new professions, maybe the planning, adapting and fruition of my work will become more predictable. Maybe I can move on from being a hunter and become more of a ranger on a natural wildlife preserve, where I will know the animals in my domain and be able to guide and protect them with the same kind of comfort as I had in my farmer days.

Time will tell.