Chapter 5: Composing Across Media

Three things I learned about storytelling:

1. 1 A good story emotionally hooks it’s audience
2. S Stories affirm who people are
3. 3 Everyone loves a good story

but, the most important thing I learned is to begin with the end in mind.

“Many students have never worked in collaborative learning groups and need to practice active and tolerant listening, helping one another, giving and receiving constructive criticism, and managing disagreements”.

I could not agree more with this statement. As a middle school physical education teacher I see far too many students come into the gymnasium at the beginning of the semester with little to no collaboration skills. Physical Education class requires students to work collaboratively to achieve goals 90% of the time. Therefore, my co-teacher and I take a great deal of responsibility in trying to help equip our students with this skill set prior to leaving our class.

We encounter students on a daily basis who cannot make decisions for themselves and cry when a classmate asks them if they could please “try to use your legs when hitting the ball next time”. That is followed by students who will choose not to take lead or speak their opinion because they are afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, or saying the wrong thing the wrong way. We finish up with the students who would rather take a grade cut and refuse to participate because they have to work cooperatively.

These students will not be able to function in society without a collaborative skill set. Each day my co-teacher and I try to go out of our way to demonstrate and put emphasis on collaboration in our day to day classroom routine. It’s a struggle at times, but eventually it starts to sink in; especially when students start to see successful results.

Remember, “Teamwork makes the dream work, people!”

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