Stories That Soar: A Broadening of the Definition of Literacy Through Collaboration with the Arts

Abstract

Stories that Soar is an organization that sends facilitators into classrooms in schools and over the course of six weeks, encourages students to write and perform stories. In this, my first case study of Stories that Soar, I explore findings based on observations made of secondary students experiencing the StoryShare curriculum, in which students write stories and then two classrooms swap stories and create plays out of them. During this process, students worked with someone else’s ideas and kept the integrity of the original work while also creating a unique interpretation as they translated the stories from the written word to scenes and dialogue. I collected data through several observations of Stories that Soar workshops in secondary classrooms and one performance day. Two findings stand out. First, I learned that middle school and high school students don’t work the same way adults do, and sometimes what looks like chaos is actually very efficient work. Secondly, I noted that it was important that the facilitator and teacher remained positive and supportive in their attitude and input, and that the students benefited greatly and were able to express themselves better and work together as a whole.