Stories

A few weeks ago I did an assembly on ‘who are you?’. As always a terribly complex, soul searching and ‘years of clever people sitting around in conferences philosiphising about semanitics, theories and realities’ type topic for 10 mins on a monday morning. I did a game, some funny facts, we ate some marshmallows. The young people were engaged, but mainly with the sugar rush and pretty pictures. Just before the bell, the mood changed as I recalled a story of a young boxer in America who, as a result of the boxing accident, had to re-evaluate who he was. As my voice changed in pitch and pace to the rhythm of the words, silence added poignance and body language and facial expression captured their eyes, I could tell the year sevens were listening. I could hear their brains whiring as they pictured themseleves next to this guy’s hospital bed whilst he took his first breath of consciousness…asking himself the question who he was and who he could be. In the same breath, they too asked that question. ‘Who am I? Who could I be?’.

That day the significance and the power of story was for the first time truly brought home to me. It can say so much, with only a few words. Use story…it works.

TAGS: stories