The Hero, the Student, and the Map

Narrative Inquiry in the Classroom

While I've mentioned that I've got a bit of a blog "re-brand" coming up, potentially this April - and I use the term re-brand so loosely it's fluttering in the wind - there are a lot of topics I want to talk about right now. I was recently talking to a penpal and we brought up the importance of storytelling in education but also in creating our own personal narratives which lend meaning to our lives. 

I began thinking about how, exactly, I have used and plan to use storytelling as a medium of teaching in my elementary classroom. In the world of teaching, this alignment—where the lesson mirrors a story arc—is often explored through narrative pedagogy. It’s the art of treating the learning process as a lived story. Aside from the natural correspondence of the greater journey of learning that a student experiences to that of a reader as they embark on their own journey through a new world, there is a more localized analogy to be made. Planning a lesson and plotting a good story arc are much the same thing: your ultimate goal is to keep your audience as engaged and invested as possible in the world you are offering them. 

The blueprints of a good lesson and a good story are, in many ways, very similar. You can even think of it as a student working through a Hero's Journey of their own. Here's how that works:

1. In a story, a character’s world is disrupted. In a classroom, a student’s understanding of the world around them should be disrupted by a question they can't yet answer. We want to hook our audience, whether it's in our books or in our lessons. We want to call to their attention a problem that needs solving, and to invest them in the journey towards solving that problem. We can't simply give them the answer right away - if you start a lesson with all of the solutions, it's the same as starting a story with its ending and resolution. There is no mystery, no intrigue, no investment, no engagement. Ultimately, the brain has to ask itself: What's the point of remembering this? We'll come back to this particular element later.
2. The student (and the reader, through the perspective of the characters) has to go through various steps in order to solve their problem. This is the perfect place for student-led inquiry, and for the astute reader, this is where they start to pick up on clues - elements of world-building, off-hand comments characters have made, and so on - in order to solve the problem before the story presents them with the solution. It's a time of creativity, critical thinking, and applying problem-solving skills. Not including this time - these crucial steps in your lessons - deprives students (and, analogously, readers) of an opportunity to engage with your story/lesson in meaningful ways. 
3. Keeping it contained is also something we do as both authors and teachers. Of course, we have sprawling worlds to let our audience explore. We could write volumes and volumes about our world-building, about how other things in our world work, about what else there is to explore. But in this lesson, in this specific story, there is one concept that is at the heart of it all. And, therefore, we have to set the borders. We have to give students some kind of map, and within that map, there are limits they cannot go beyond. The teacher, like the author - or even like the open-game world developer - builds the walls so the student can find the gate. True agency isn't total freedom; it’s the freedom to struggle within a meaningful structure.
4. Speaking of agency, we're always talking about character-driven stories and how much more powerful they are. The same is found here, within this approach to teaching: the student's agency is reflected in their ability to investigate through various means and find the solution which best fits the problem. Maybe there is more than one solution. Maybe solutions come with a cost, and they have to decide - that ultimate final dilemma - on what they're willing to sacrifice or what cost they're willing to pay for the solution they need. We see it all the time in stories - characters finally getting what they wanted and needed, but often at an unforeseen cost. In any case, giving students agency to explore the world makes them take ownership of their learning, just like allowing a character to have agency in their world helps the audience feel like they're seeing the journey through the eyes of a character they can truly relate to.
5. I'm harping on about agency, but here's the bottom line: A plot where things just "happen" to a hero is boring. A lesson where a student just "receives" information is forgettable. For our students, the 'Aha!' moment is the climax of the narrative. The satisfaction of solving something on their own, or finding the answer - even if it is through a research-based discovery - cements the learning journey and provides a powerful incentive for learners to not only engage in the next lesson, but in remembering this lesson for the rest of their lives.
6. And then there's the wrap-up. In the Hero's Journey, there's a return to the beginning, only things have changed for the world and the main character in some important, significant way. In a classroom setting, the resolution isn't just finishing the worksheet, or getting a good grade on a later quiz to show that they've memorized the information. It’s the moment the student looks at the world and realizes they now have more tools to explore, analyze, and maybe even change it. They return to the status quo, just as we do in the Hero's Journey, but they are no longer an ordinary observer, and their understanding of the world around them has fundamentally changed. Perhaps they've added another tool to their inventory - something that they can apply in other lessons, to solve other problems, and uncover more about their world. That's our denouement, and that's how we keep students engaged in their learning - because now that they know that's something they can do, learning becomes a whole more more engaging, more interesting, more fun. And that's really what it's all about, in the end: cultivating a passion for learning. For the pursuit of knowledge. 

I couldn't wait to share these thoughts, so I wrote them down and I'm throwing them out there in case they help anyone. In the meantime, like I said, a more official change will take place starting in April. But honestly? The short and skinny of it is: expect more posts like this, alongside some more general thoughts and scrapbooky feels.