Family Narrative Project

Over Thanksgiving I did something unheard of at HMLC - I sent the learners home with a project. Since we have been studying stories - who tells them, why we tell them, and how they influence us - I wanted our learners to take time to listen to the stories their own families tell. They were assigned to get a story from a family member and record it in some way to share with us when they returned.

My own memories of Thanksgiving meals with my family are sitting at a very long table in my grandparents’ dining room, listening to my father and his sister share all of the naughty things they got away with when they were kids, along with my grandparents’ reflections of living on various farms between Kentucky, Minnesota, and Virginia. If I got over being bored I actually picked up on quite a lot of family lore. I want that for my own children - I want them to learn how to be quiet at the dinner table and absorb the stories the adults are sharing. My own daughter tackled the assignment by interrupting everyone at the dinner table and saying “Let’s all go around and tell a story.” Not so subtle, that one.

A large part of the project, to me, was just the act of listening to another person, particularly to a person who is important in the child’s life. Another part was getting to play a role in capturing family history in one way or the other. Telephone is a popular game with our learners (and all kids) and we all love hearing the changes a simple sentence makes as it goes around the circle. This is an excellent example of how our memories change - and our stories change over time. If we don’t record our family stories we will lose them.

Hearing everyone share their family stories may have been one of my favorite moments at HMLC so far. A few learners wrote up their stories in a narrative, one learner made a podcast, some drew a picture, one made a digital story with beautiful pictures to capture the story he heard, another hosted a newscast, and one portrayed her story in a graphic-novel style. It was truly delightful to listen to them proudly share their family’s antics or moments with their peers. It launched us into some pretty dramatic discussions about the difference between an 80s childhood and now - with some looks of shock and horror as we were told about the lack of quality video games in the 80s (along with the dinosaurs).

I hope the families got as much enjoyment out of the project as I did.