I can relate really well with the oral aspect of literacy and only because everyone talked in my family and therefore they had stories to tell! I have lots of memories of being told "family anecdotes, tall tales, and embellished legacies" (Cline & Necochea, 2003, p. 126) during long car rides, during camping trips, during meals with families, or sneakily eavesdropping as my mom and her sisters gossiped about other family members or simply reminisced about their own childhood!
Reflecting on these memories, I believe that stories and the act of storytelling allowed my family and I to spend time together (Sabnani, 2009). My sisters and I always gathered around grandparents, aunts and uncles and older cousins who were willing to share stories of their past. We were never discouraged to listen even when subject matters were serious or had negative outcomes and any questions we had were always answered - the stories were very much interactive too! I especially liked hearing stories which were accompanied by crisp and faded black and white or sepia coloured pictures and most especially if the people within those pictures were still alive or are the storytellers behind the captures! Sabnani states that “pictures also stimulate imagination and the art of reading between the lines…They aid memory…encourage curiosity and creativity, particularize situations, provide temporal links, and extended text” (Sabnani, n.d.). As great as the stories were told, having pictures to accompany them enriched and created more nuances to the stories itself. It was also interesting to hear different versions of stories which I now see as allowing me to understand “the possibility of multiple perspectives” (Sabnani, n.d.) and perhaps, also taught me to think critically about stories and situations I was immersed into.
I heard many stories but I never attributed the act of storytelling to my interest in reading or writing in later years. I wonder if my parents (and other adults in my childhood) knew that what they were doing in telling us stories was actually setting a good foundation for our future in literacy?
In my experience, I don't remember being too affected by the discrepancies between my home literacy practice and school literacy practices. However, I also believed that reading and writing was something just done in school. At such a young age, I believed I conformed to this idea and when I had some challenges writing stories during “creative writing” periods I never thought that it was because perhaps, I excelled better in oral literacy practices, or other modes of literacy. I didn't struggle with the conventional ways of literacy; however, I always felt that I was never good enough as a writer or I wasn't creative enough because I couldn't write the way my teachers taught and 'encouraged' me. This leads me to think about how (cognitively, emotionally, spiritually) limiting conventional literacy practices can be for children who practice literacy beyond reading and writing. Children are restricted in their ability to express their thoughts and ideas and they can be profoundly silenced when the literacy practice(s) that they connect with are not honoured in their classrooms. As an Early Childhood Educator I find that I can easily experience literacy with children in varying ways - oral practices is almost always included. Is it the same when children enter elementary school or is it harder to uphold the other ways of engaging in literacy (or children's varying home literacy practices) because of the curricular mandates of teaching children to read or write a specific way?
References:
Cline, Z. & Necochea, J. (2003). My mother never read to me. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47(2), 122-126.
Sabnani, N. (2009, July). The Kaavad storytelling tradition of Rajasthan. Design thoughts, p. 28.
Sabnani, N. (n.d.). Designing for children: with focus on 'play and learn'. 'Homing' in with stories.
Thanks so much for sharing your personal story here; it brings to life the whole notion of oral storytelling. It's lovely to see that you consider oral storytelling as an integral part of your work with children. I believe it can also be a part of the k-12 arena, but we must let go of the archaic notion that schools are to be quiet; that silence means people are working/concentrating. I think that in both systems we also need to slow down and allow room for the stories to be told; to put the clock aside and flow with the stories in whatever format they present themselves.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk about your personal experience of oral story telling at home, I think of my own oral story telling experience at home. Living in a traditional Chinese family, our parents do not share their experiences or stories about them with their children. Family time for me is when we sit at the same table and having dinner together without talking. In my family culture, eating and talking at the same time is an impolite attitude, therefore, we should always eat quietly. There is no conversation happening during the “gather together” time, not even communication. Often, my parents are not so interested in our stories or what is happing at school. What they interested is how we do at our studies or what grade we are getting at then end of school year. However, I did not feel how it affects my school literacy learning. What it affected maybe is the how I engaged in class discussions. I do not feel comfortable talking in classes; I like to keep my opinions in writing because oral story telling is not valued in my families. When you talk about “[a]s an Early Childhood Educator [you] find that [you] can easily experience literacy with children in varying ways - oral practices is almost always included”, when I think about that, I feel the same way as you do. However, I also question about how often do we stop children when they try to tell their stories to us? For instance, when children try to tell their own stories to us while we are reading story books with the groups, we often stop them from telling or ask them to share it after we finish the book; is it because we valued more of the reading story process than the oral story telling process of children?
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