Big Apple Playback

I had the pleasure of seeing a troupe of storytellers called the Big Apple Playback Theatre Company. They are from New York, as their name suggests, and their work is remarkable for a number of reasons.

Number 1: How it Works
One of the performers sits at the front of the room and serves as the moderator. Her position close to the audience creates an intimacy that is only reinforced by her conversation directly with the spectators.

The moderator asks for a volunteer to share an experience that created one, two, or three feelings . The moderator then reiterates the story for the approval of the spectator, creates a title for the story, and tells actors waiting nearby to perform it.

Number 2: Why it's So Powerful
Needless to say, most adults are not used to discussing their feelings, particularly in public. At first no one volunteered. However, after the second story was told, hands shot up all over the room when asked for a contribution.

Needless to say, most adults would like to talk about how they feel if they felt they were in a safe environment.

Number 3: Mirroring
The telling of the story can be moving, but the performance of it transforms it into a new sort of project. This happened for both audience members who hadn't spoken and for the original storyteller, I found out afterwards.

One rarely is offered an opportunity to see one's feelings interpreted in movement and sound (sometimes language, sometimes not). As with children, adults benefit from a validation of their experience. The evening was moving in a way that is hard to describe if you weren't there.

Number 4: Surprises
The stories that one thought would be moving in performance rarely struck a chord for the audience. The death of a loved one, for example, often caught sympathy with the audience in its telling but had little effect when performed. Perhaps we've become immune to dramatic emotional states through television and the stage. Rarely do you get a film that doesn't focus on some sort of upheaval.

The stories of subtle experience, however, were moving beyond words.

And so I'll leave it there.

The British Curriculum: Strands of Conversation

The British curriculum for Key Stage 3 in primary school is described as having 12 strands:

1. Speaking
2. Listening and Understanding
3. Group Discussion
4. Drama
5. Word Recognition
6. Word Structure and Spelling
7. Understanding and Interpreting Texts
8. Responding to Texts
9. Creating and Shaping Texts
10. Text Structure and Organization
11. Sentence Structure and Punctuation
12. Presentation

All are in conversation must be in conversation in order for them to be fully understood. All are addressed when telling and listening to stories.

Storytelling as Conversation

I've already articulated the reasons for which conversation makes a very apt model for learning. Now I'll extend the argument to an equation that is the same backward as it is forward (storytelling as conversation: conversation as storytelling).

1. All conversation contains convention.

2. Convention is, by definition, what we take for granted.

3. All stories are made of conventions and other elements that are new.

4. By responding to the conventional meanings in existing stories with new stories, storytelling becomes a kind of conversation between us and received wisdom.

Conversation as Storytelling

What is conversation but a series of stories batted (or gently tossed) between at least two parties? One story either contradicts another, context shapes the story that is chosen, and so on.

I joined CAGSE because the CEO believes strongly that storytelling as a bridge between children's experience and that of the past, present, future -- in any subject area. And we add the element of Latin language taught as conversation as well. From the largest elements (beginnings, endings, and so on) to the smallest (words and their meaning), students start to look at the world around them in new ways.

Some of this can be seen in the blog posts. All of it is very exciting indeed.

A Most Generous Site

Educators looking for inspiration and ideas (especially along digital lines) should not miss ICT in Education or Ewan McIntosh's blog.

The sites are generous in their range of offerings and definitely worth a look.

Storytelling as Conversation

Circle Game

For years, I discussed at length why best model for learning is that of conversation. Most of my interest in social networks, advertising, innovation, and just about everything else in business involves the value of dialogue and of creatively shaping stories without censorship or pressure to conform (in other words, structured but unscripted conversation).

I began this blog four years ago just to talk about this issue in business. It took me all this time to get back to where I was before I took the job running CAGSE.

CAGSE?

If you've just checked in, CAGSE is an educational consultancy that puts Latin programs into State schools in England.

This is not just any Latin program. It's one that solves all the problems left open by existing programs like Cambridge (no grammar) and others (no interest). Based on building blocks from Richard Gilder's book, Via Facilis, the kids learn a lot more than Latin. They learn about how language works, they hit each of the 12 strands of the British curriculum, and they have fun.

There are a lot of reasons for choosing England -- the symbolic weight Latin has here because only the top kids in top schools are allowed to study it, the opportunity to participate in improving the educational system according to government standards that Latin meets, and more.

The two pieces to our program at the moment are language study -- mostly through games and exercises -- and storytelling. Both develop critical thinking, problem-solving, confidence, and literacy.

The storytelling program has lagged behind the language lessons per se because of time and resources. However, the time has come to go full ahead.

Back to the Beginning

The model we'll use is storytelling as conversation -- among languages, between the past and the present, between authority and interpretation, and between individuals and the collective.

More as we go.

What's in a Name?

Yesterday I attended a workshop in Taunton, Somerset (UK) about (what the leaders called) the art of workshop.

OK, anything can be an art, and there is art in anything well done. But that's a bit of a reach.

It turned out to be three women who seemed to be working out their ideas about what to do in such a workshop on us. That would not be so bad, really, if they had a clear idea about what they were trying to accomplish (we all teach so we learn). But instead, I had the distinct impression we were paying for the privilege of teaching them what they should be looking for, doing, and why.

Needless to say, I was glad the thing wasn't expensive.

Workshops are a Crap Shoot

Anyone who has ever attended a workshop knows that it's a crap shoot. You are never quite sure what is going to happen, who will attend (very important to how the thing goes), or what you'll learn (if anything).

I won't go into detail on this one, but suffice it to say that there were workshop leaders from all over the country who were led around without being consulted about how the thing was going -- except in terms of how to do it better next time.

Why not check in while the thing was happening and change directions when needed?

Learned A Lot (But Not As Advertised)

I came out of the day having learned what Sarah Mooney, my storytelling partner, and I need to insure when we lead our own programs. And I learned it better than if it had been taught on purpose.

1. These things need to be fun. Don't take yourself or your project too seriously.

2. They need to be fun through play. Real play. This means you, workshop leaders.

While doodling as you do in your teenage self while the grown-ups drone on, a fellow participant and I embellished a map of "workshop" we had created in a fit of silliness to meet the criteria of a completely different assignment (write a manifesto for workshop -- we should tell them?).

This participant crossed out the word "work" and replaced it with "play" -- as in playshop.

Playing means free movement -- of ideas, of the body, of relationships. Don't try to control things by sticking to the program. Honor your participants by checking in with them, and adjust accordingly.

3. Ask questions well -- and with precision.

Come up with an angle on an old question that can change perspective on the issue. No guarantees, but a little creativity and thought goes a long way.

More in the next post.

Children in the Middle East

There is a wonderful blog with posts from Palestinian and Israeli children. It worth seeing.

Leila Segal, a freelance journalist, runs the blog along with other youth projects. Take a look.

A Song in Case: Latin to the Oldies

I had the privilege to teach Latin cases to a group of year 5's at a school in Tower Hamlets this week. I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun at work.

Silly Works

To a non-classicist, the song's words are pretty dull (see the end of this post), and the melody doesn't have a lot of oomph either. But neither did Schoolhouse Rock in the US in the '70s, and a 40-something friend of mine and I can still sing through the preamble to the Constitution because of it.

I'm the first one to admit that our CAGSE composers aren't exactly on the level of those Schoolhouse Rock folks. Still, together with arm movements and the ability to stand up while they learn, it was a room full of enough energy and smiling faces that you might have mistaken the lesson for a party.

Story Time

After we sang for about 15 minutes, Sarah Mooney, CAGSE's Director of Storytelling, told a story about a boy with a flute and a princess who makes choices about who she'll marry ("this isn't one of those stories where the boys get to boss the girls around"). It was peppered with Latin vocabulary already familiar to the class.

A pretty sophisticated discussion ensued about both the plot and the words Sarah chose. Then we sang the song again (to make sure that they had learned the grammar, both in Latin and English).

They did.

Can you believe I get paid to do this?

The Song

Ovid, it ain't -- but the kids couldn't care less:

The nominative case is a person or thing doing the action in the sentence.
The accusative case is a person or thing receiving the action in the sentence.
The genitive case is of.
The dative case is to or for.
The ablative case is by, with, or from.

Blowing One's Own Horn

So rarely does one praised for one's work in public -- and to the skies -- that I must post the tribute here.

How lucky am I?

What we're up to at CAGSE . . . .

If I haven't mentioned it lately (and I haven't), a good way to find out what we're up to at CAGSE, particularly in the area of Classics is to visit Dr. Richard Gilder's site, Via Facilis.

Sarah Mooney and I run a Storytelling program that teaches close observation and drawing conclusions (otherwise known as analysis or critical thinking) through creative narrative. I'll tell you more about that soon.

Meanwhile, Richard said some very nice things about me here.

How can I not crow? Everyone should be so lucky to have such a colleague.

Everything Old: Canons IV

So here's a surprising turn of events, particularly after the last series of posts on canons and women.

I've been approached to republish a piece on Mary Pix and the misattribution of a play called Zelmane that originally appeared in Notes and Queries. This is an Oxford publication specializing in arcane details and footnotes that become articles from lack of relevance to the paper for which it was originally intended.

The piece will now go in a university textbook that lists "literature" from 1400 to 1800.

The anti-canonical becomes standard -- probably from boredom with what we've always studied.

Like language, "great" books change as we do.

Susanna Centlivre: Canons, III

Continuing from the last post and hoping not to belabor the point, we're gathered here to discuss the ways in which canon's are constructed and the requirement of transcendence in art.

Sounds a lot loftier than it is -- in fact, it's all rather predictable with what we know about human beings and their need to be right.

Where We Came From

As I mentioned in earlier posts, intellectual convictions often house emotional reactions but make claims to higher truths through the use of inpenetrable language.

If there isn't any hanging around, you can always make some up. T.S. Eliot's objective correlative, the French critics' priority in absences of presences, and so on.

(As a post-grad, friends of mine and I were going to do a video called Graduate School for Dummies along these lines -- highlighting the one or two ideas hidden cleverly in hundreds of pages of labored and precariously structured sentences.)

Running with the Woolfs

A previous post discusses a bit of Woolf's partial criteria that she claims are the signs of objectively beautiful and transcendent art.

Here's the strongest example of the way canons are made or broken.

Shakespeare's Sister

One of the most quoted and best remembered chapters Woolf wrote in any book is the one on Shakespeare's sister ("let's call her Judith") in A Room of One's Own.

Woolf uses the story to slam home all of the points she's made thus far -- women capable of "transcendent art" could have done if they had had the same opportunities as men.

Judith wants to write, but she's locked in her room by her parents and told she'll marry or else. She escapes through the window and educates herself at Cambridge dressed as a boy. She makes her way to London where a theater manager "takes pity on her."

Pregnant and without hope, Judith kills herself and lies buried at the crossroads of Elephant and Castle.

Honorable Mention

Susanna Centlivre has the same composite fictional biography as Judith. Although she lived a bit later, Centlivre supposedly ran away from home, studied at Cambridge dressed as a boy, and came to London to marry the cook at Queen Anne's Court.

The difference is that Centlivre really did become "the second woman of the English stage" after Aphra Behn. Her plays were in regular repertory until the end of the 19th C in England, and every library of note will lend you any one of her dramas.

David Garrick did his farewell performance in one of her plays. You don't get much more prestigious in the theater than that.

Centlivre was also a woman of letters whose words were seen in the popular press with those of men such as Sterne and Swift. With Woolf's knowledge history -- even of obscure writers such as Cavendish -- she had to know of Centlivre. So why did Woolf neglect to mention her at all?

Maybe because Centlivre's existence, like Cavendish's worthiness (something of which I believe Woolf was not convinced, of course), derails Woolf's argument connecting transcendence to fame and women writers to both.

Just a theory.

And that's how canon's are made. Or unmade.

All other great examples are welcome -- please send any you know of by email.

Canons II: How Do You Know That They're Loaded?

Continuing from the last post, why had no one heard of Susanna Centlivre when she was in regular repertory throughout the 19th C in England? When David Garrick had given his farewell performance in one of her plays? When she was known (until that time) as the second woman of the English stage?

This point, for those of you who have just tuned in, is certainly arcane. But it is a good example of the ways in which canons are constructed.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Virginia Woolf did women writers a great service by writing A Room of One's Own. In it, she created a space that has been broadened yearly for women to be recognized as artists equal to their male equivalents.

Women, Woolf says, require the same independence as men in order to create high art. How can anyone (man or woman) create anything of note if their time is divided among changing diapers and cooking meals -- without peace, quiet, and solitude to think?

All anyone needs, Woolf says, is 50 pounds and a room of one's own.

Not So Fast

If this were all, I'd be right behind Mme. Woolf. However, there is another requirement for women's art to rate. It must be transcendent.

Transcendence in Woolf's terms are really that of TS Eliot -- no everyday sorts of activities unless they are rendered symbolic in some way. That leaves 99% of women in history out of the ball game. Their lives were made up entirely of quotidien responsibilities, behaviors, and results.

In short, "transcendence" is gendered masculine here -- only those with particular educations and public lives could write about life outside the home.

An Example

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, a 17thC noblewoman, lived as public a life as was possible at that time. Only Aphra Behn, Restoration playwright and spy for Charles II, had a broader life. However, Behn's life made her notorious and Cavendish remained in society, even if she was considered a bit eccentric for her intellectual pursuits and writing.

Cavendish visited the Royal Society and saw Boyle do his experiments, and she made attempts at philosophy and poetry. However, her crowning achievement was a volume of 20 plays that are more modern than anything before the 20th century.

Cavendish's vision doesn't suit Woolf's. In fact, Woolf dismisses her in A Room of One's Own as the Mad Woman in the Attic.

In this way, Woolf buried Cavendish and her work for 4 and a half centuries. I wrote about her (and many other literary types who also saw the Virago volume) because she belongs in the history of remarkable women writers.

Soon, she'll be back in the canon. Officially. When a book comes out called The Great Book of Women Writers Through History or The Norton Reader of Women Writers -- or another such explicitly authoritative sort of name.

Well, people will say, it's in the book, so it must be true.

That's how canon's are fired.

And there's an even a more explicit example in the next post.

Taking a Shot at a Loaded Canon

I took a long walk with a good friend, and the subject came up of the ways in which canons are constructed. Is there such a thing as transendence in art -- some aesthetic representation that are universally moving?

TS Eliot certainly thought so. As it happens, so did my very famous and well-respected friend.

But is the rest of art more than a wasteland?

The Back Story

I wrote my dissertation on four playwrights that I had found in a volume published by Virago entirely by chance when I arrived early for a lunch appointment.

The playwrights are Susanna Centlivre, Mary Pix, Catherine Trotter, Mary Delariviere Manley, and Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.

I had a feeling that if I hadn't heard of them, very few other people had either. So I decided to see what there was to know.

True But Not Clever

The short version is this:
Male critics had taken these women out of the cannon because of disdain for their sex, their plays, or both.

There was much more information from feminist critics. The problem is that they had also taken the playwrights out of context to lionize them. It was a mixed bag -- 19th C critics who had run out of road projected 19th C theories backward on the 18th and 17th centuries. Their history was bad, and the conclusions were just wrong. 20th C feminist critics projected contemporary literary theory on drama and drama history.

The whole thing was a mess. I decided to simply put these plays back in context to see what happened. Seemed so obvious, really.

Who Knew?

This work was full of surprises. One of the playwrights, Susanna Centlivre, had been performed in regular repertory in England until the end of the 19th C. David Garrick had done his farewell performance in one of her plays. She was a woman of letters yakking it up with the likes of Jonathan Swift.

Why hadn't anyone ever heard of her?

More in the next post.

Spelling: The Sequel

Dictionary Evangelist

Erin McKean is a lexicographer and entertaining conference speaker.

When first I encountered her two years ago at GEL, she began her talk by addressing a common misconceptions about her work.

"People often think that lexicographers prescribe meaning and keep the language as pure as possible. In fact, we research the way language is used -- in all sorts of media -- and we chart how language changes."

With this in mind, Erin's views on spelling are generous. See the last post for details on how to let yourself off the hook, regardless of how often others wince at the way you put letters together in writing

When Last We Saw Our Hero . . .

Erin is working as an independent assessor for CAGSE's Latin programs in primary school. The success of the pilot, running in 15 schools across London, will be measured both by her and by another independent assessor and former head of the Primary Trust, Peter Frost.

The first rule in business: If you haven't measured it, it never happened.

And So

Erin and I had supper at Carluccio's (for those of you who visit London occasionally -- there are quite a few, and the food is consistently good without being expensive).

I was interested to hear about her day in the schools.

We got on the subject of spelling and spell checks.

"Spell checks are terrible," said Erin, "and even if someone were to design a good one, people wouldn't use it anyway."

I asked why. She explained it thus:

It's very similar to the way a smoke alarm goes off every time you make toast. How many times has such a device been dismantled, never to be seen again?

The spell check is very much like a smoke alarm that demands attention every time one writes anything. It's annoying. So you ignore it.

Happens to be true for me, and I'm a lousy speller.

So Why Are Those of Us Not Blessed With the Spelling Gene So Bad At Catching Mistakes, Even When We Try?

Erin has given this a lot of thought. "Fixing your spelling requires that you know that you don't know how to spell a word (which means checking a lot of false positives from your spell checker) ... how often do you know that you don't know something, when it's something you're not good at in the first place?"

And the alternative?

"I think we need two things: better spell checkers (no false positives) and more leniency for typos/thinkos/spellos."

Leniency for Spellos. I'd vote for the person who ran for president on that ticket (Why do you hate freedom?).

So many jokes I could make about the thinkos of the White House's current inhabitant, but it's just too easy. I'm just not that kind of girl.

More in the next post on spelling, dictionaries, and the enlightenment.

"A" is For Apple (And Also for Adapt)

Spelling it Out

There have been debates in education at least since the 1960's over whether or not demanding proper spelling will block children's creative impulses.

One side posits that children should write in whatever form they like without reference to grammatical or linguistic standards practiced by (some) adults. In what other time of life is it possible to be free to express feelings, thoughts, ideas without fear of censure from authority?

The other side of the argument says that without enforcing spelling rules, children don't learn self-discipline.

The Dictionary Evangelist

Erin McKean, Dictionary Evangelist -- and lexicographer for Oxford University Press -- feels that good spellers have made life unnecessarily uncomfortable for those without the same talent.

"It's genetic," she told me at dinner, "like being able to roll your tongue or bend your first knuckle back."

Erin's concern is that that those with this genetic gift -- or (worse) those who have beaten into submission without benefit of it -- have created an unrelenting sense of morality about getting words right. This peculiar zeal (and the opinion about spelling that is its source) are apparently only apparent for those who evangelize about English.

"There's a sense that if you misspell a word, you're being lazy or just don't care."

And how many of the seven deadly sins will then collect in such an atmosphere of sloth?

The demand for fortitude extends to moralizing about spell checks. Spell checks are dangerous because they encourage slovenliness of mind. They clean one's dirty laundry that would otherwise be hanging out for everyone to see. And we should clean our own laundry, by gum.

I couldn't help wondering if these puritans of metaphor had ever hired cleaners for their homes.

How consistent are these religious principles anyway?

Discipline Shmiscipline

Erin suggests that that spelling is really only one discipline among many. If good spellers took their argument to the logical conclusion, it would be absurd.

"Should we say shoes are immoral, too? That if we were just disciplined enough to toughen up our feet, we could all walk around barefoot?"

According to Erin, language changes as people need it to change. Dictionaries do not prescribe meaning but instead describe the ways in which words have transformed and are used every day.

So those who sniff at new and alternative spellings when they see them in their OED are simply hardened reactionaries, condemned to a life of mounting disappointment and increasing despair.

More in the next post.

For Those of You Who Love Language, A Treat

Erin McKean, a consultant assessor for our Latin programs in State schools, has a most wonderful blog called Dictionary Evangelist.

Subscribe if you love language -- it's consistently a lot of fun.

Transition Year Challenges: Mapping the Journey

Continuing from the last post . . . .

I spoke to an arts organization in London's East End, and they are interested in working with CAGSE on a mapping project for transition-year children we work with in our storytelling program. This program I've designed and implement with a professional storyteller called Sarah Mooney.

The Program

The Storytelling program does a number of things, all at once:

1. Raising children's awareness of how they think, how they feel, and the relationship between the two. This allows them to be responsible for the choices they make -- once they understand how they make them.

2. Offering children ownership over creative efforts that are often prescribed.

3. Giving children practice being more observant. Most people get lost in the process of analytic work somewhere between observation and drawing conclusions. Heighten sensitivity to the world around you, understand the importance of looking closely at detail, and you're less likely to take short cuts. This alone develops habits for more rigorous analysis of problems and makes it more likely we'll solve them in a satisfying way.

3. Offering teachers ways to enhance their own good work through somatic learning strategies. If we learn best by understanding concepts in different contexts, why not get the information in to the body as well as through the ears into the head?

4. Offering teachers ways new ways to approach subjects that are hardest to teach -- critical thinking, grammar, and writing, citizenship, and self-esteem.

We offer this program to schools to put in a literacy slot within the curriculum. It both develops literacy skills and works towards the requirements of the SEAL program currently being rolled out for the good of children's emotional development.

Getting the Program on a Map

It's likely that in January CAGSE will be working with Chris Nold to do emotional mapping of neighborhoods around a school through intergenerational walks -- within the school as well.

If Chris's and our past work is anything to go by, the project will give children and parents (or grandparents) a bigger context in which to see themselves as individuals, their relationship with school, and their place in the physical environment at home and in and around academic work.

Sarah and I will then build the storytelling work around negotiating identity within families, within schools structure, and as children move on to secondary school from the comfort of a familiar primary school environment.

More in the next post . . .

Emotional Cartography: In and Outside the Classroom

Continuing from the last post . . . .

I met with Chris Nold a week or so ago to discuss the possibility of working on a project within the storytelling work we do at CAGSE.

Most learning challenges for children are emotional rather than intellectual. What if we could help kids learn better by visually mapping the way they learn?

The Order of Chaos

In the creative process, there is always a point at which one steps into unknown territory. Writers often call it a block, but everyone knows that feeling of frustration when you've walked out of what you know and are not yet where you want to go.

Most of the time, this state causes anxiety, stress, and despair. It doesn't matter how many journeys of this kind we've made -- somehow, each time, we believe the state of not knowing will never end.

Once acknowledged, adults have the cognitive resources -- both intellectual and emotional -- to remind themselves that they've done this before, to remember the moment when they last found their way, and that no one exists in a limbo of uncertainty forever.

In other words, adults have the reasoning abilities (and one hopes, the practice) to know that change is inevitable.

What if there were a way to help children understand and remember this as well? Would this allow them to be feel comfortable with more risk and be more creative?

More in the next post.

Mapping Order from Chaos: Chris Nold

Pop Tech

I'm not sure how many of you have seen Kate Bulkley's article on Pop Tech in Guardian, but it's certainly worth taking a look. Of all the pieces I've seen, this one gives the closest picture to my experience of the conference -- both in content and energy.

Chris Nold

One of the most impressive speakers spoke the first day -- Chris Nold, who does emotional mapping of cities. Chris is interested in cities: what -- essentially -- is a city? What makes one city different from another? What makes one neighborhood stand out in one way while others don't?

It's not the buildings alone, Chris contends. It's the relationship between and among people and the environment.

Mapping It

Chris has created a machine that measures adrenaline as people walk around a neighborhood. Get enough people taking the same walk, record what they say, and you can map the overlaps and differences that make that neighborhood unique.

If this explanation is too abstract, please look here.

The results are extraordinary. More in the next post.

Speaking of Latin (and in it) . . .

The CEO of CAGSE, Dr. Richard Gilder, contends that the reason Classics are no longer taught in schools is the way they HAVE been taught to date.

There are plenty of academic torments we endure that have no immediately apparent application to day-to-day life. In fact, of all of these academic abstractions, Latin has the clearest relevance of all -- knowledge of it can faciliatate communication and understanding in whichever Romance language you speak.

And it works in English, too.

There's nothing that I can post that will match the blogs of the primary school kids with whom we work. These are all pupils who would not ordinarily have access to learning Latin, and through CAGSE have begun the language as a new adventure.

See what they have to say.