Relationships grow out of shared experience. These relationships form a kind of economy, one that supports us and nourishes us and that is worth valuing as much as we value the cash economy of free-market capitalism.

Years ago when I lived in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, I was inspired to get involved in my community. Near my home, a river-front property known as the Quan Chow Lands was slated for development on what was essentially flood-plain. I and others joined up to see if there was another alternative to building seniors’ housing on this fertile patch of land, at one time the site of a successful vegetable farm. Though there was a lot of energy to save the land, the developers won the day and the project, Canterbury Place, went ahead. Ironically, the land flooded even as the foundations of the new houses were being laid.

This summer I’ve been asking myself how oral storytelling works in the classroom setting. Why is it important that children hear stories, not just from their parents and grandparents, but in a context where they are listening with their classmates? From my reading and reflection, I believe the experience offers:

1)      Immediacy, intimacy, vulnerability. As a group, the children witness the spontaneity and authenticity of the teller. This captures the children’s interest on many levels. The storyteller makes direct eye contact with her listeners. She isn’t holding a book. She doesn’t need to turn a page. Also, she isn’t relying on any text to tell her story. She is remembering and therefore “re-living” the story as she tells it. This gives children evidence that stories live in people, not just in texts, and therefore, they too can be storytellers.

Friday was my last full day in the classroom. I told the children one last story and then gave them a lined exercise book which I had covered in brown wrapping paper. I said,

"This might look like an ordinary exercise book. But it's not. I covered it in brown paper so that when you see it you know that it's different. It's your Book of Noticing. You can write down things that you notice. When I was your age and a little bit older I wanted to be a spy. I had read a story called Odette about a girl who helped the French Resistance during the Second World War. She had to be very observant all the time and pretend to be someone she wasn't.  I also read a book called Harriet the Spy." (They knew about Harriet. They'd seen the movie.) "I liked to go around observing things like Harriet. I had a green binder where I kept my notes."

The children sat patiently on the carpet. The stack of notebooks was beside me.

This past winter in my Grade Three classroom we made a dragon mural. We began by cutting out large sheets of blue and grey construction paper to make mountain ranges, streams, and rivers. And then we added our dragons. Some were so large they loomed over the mountain peaks. Others resembled hummingbirds. Some stood perched on a slope. Others were in flight, entering their dragon lairs. Two of the children decided to make a lake for the mural and filled it with fish, happily swimming about in brightly coloured pairs. I asked them to tell me about the lake. They said it was magic.