Wheelock College Blog Comment on Making Learning Visible and Storytelling by Kiran Raza

I think it’s sometimes easy to overlook how significant stories can be when we’re trying to frame how we think about ourselves and the world. We’re constantly talking about people and events, we read, we gossip, we go on social media, we watch TV and we don’t always recognize that these are all forms of storytelling. I remember someone once telling me that we “live storied lives”. This class has taught me that stories are the way our minds make sense of our lives and the world. I think that we try to understand what’s going on around us by constructing stories to interpret what is occurring around us in relation to events and people. Stories are our way of creating our views of the world and constructing meaning about who we are as individuals, who others are, and who we are in relation to others. When humans tell stories it’s to form relationships, make connections, and create communities. Stories help us to share unique experiences and beliefs whether it’s through a verbal outlet, a blog, etc. As a teacher, I need to be able to tell stories effectively. I need to tell the stories of the students and families when they don’t have a voice to do it themselves and when they’re stories need to be told. I need to be a storyteller because we live in a world where people want to listen to stories and a good story can tug at heartstrings as well as purse strings. I need to be a storyteller to tell the stories of my classroom. It’s a great way to keep families engaged, to keep other teachers aware and enthused, to keep students motivated to keep doing what they’re doing because they are learning so much and are doing such an amazing job. As someone once told me, in order for something to make any real sense, you have to have created meaning out of it. Strategies that help students make meaning is more than worth the extra effort. Nothing goes into long-term memory unless it makes sense and has meaning. Of the two, they say, meaning-making has much more impact on long-term memory than sense-making. Let's spend time designing learning experiences that create meaning for students and making sure that the knowledge is bought and not just rented. In order to accomplish this, teachers should: Connect new learning to previous learning. Connect new learning to students' backgrounds. Model how the skill or concept is used. Demonstrate how content or skills create leverage (gain us something) in other subjects. Making Learning Visible has always been an intriguing thought. How can you give families and students more than just the final product? What about all of the wonderful things that went into the process? How can we communicate to other people just how valuable the learning going on in the classroom is? And the answer, for the most part, is to make learning visible through documentation. Documentation can be used to demonstrate work and progress, assess children and teachers through pictures and interpretation, as a form of reflection to help think about what comes next, what works and what doesn’t, how to strengthen your bond with individual children, and how to strengthen yourself as an educator. The best thing about making learning visible is that it may be the children’s picture in the documentation, but it also showcases the learning of the teachers.