Day 1

It was a pleasure to meet you all tonight.

Present were: Emily, Johnathan, Chris, Jena, Ali, Diana, Gwen, Tess, Tim, Laura, and Shaun

For next week: Read Ruth Sawyer to page 56.
Also, note as many instances of social storytelling as you can find. Look for storytelling everywhere in daily life.

Here is what we did tonight:

We reviewed the syllabus. Please note my best email address: novateller@aol.com. Also, to learn more about me you can go to my website: www.novateller.com

After going over the syllabus, I asked you all to stand and move to the center seats. You did so without hesitation. I discussed the way in which the spoken word (combined with the implied threat of the the teacher) brought you into motion. I then shared some information about my time in San Diego. I described the Turkish Taffy effect of the landscape and the West and East sides of Balboa Park. I described the RC Airplane bluffs, the off-leash park, and the playground noting the similarities. We discussed the way that spoken language is a kind of remote control software that operates on a basis of understanding and agreement between speaker and listener.

I offered that the physical ability to speak seems to have appeared abut 100,000 years ago.
We discussed the question of whether people began speaking as soon as they had the ability. Gwen suggested that perhaps we grunted for an extended period of time.
Laura offered an example of the concept of the colors blue and green in Japanese as an example of language affecting thought.
Diana countered that she remembered understanding others long before she herself chose to speak.
I presented the concept of Recapitulation Theory as a way of considering the development of human language.
We then considered the number of stories that had been employed in the conversation.
Story can be thought of as a kind of storage (though the word "story" and "store" are not related, etymologically) containing ideas and experiences.
Tell is derived from Tally, meaning to make an accounting. Hence an Automatic teller Machine counts out your money.
Some of the first writing appears to have been tallies of stores.
Tell also has another connotation: to discern.
So to tell a story is to recount events and to discern their meaning or use.

After a break I shared a story about watching a lizard in my backyard. We reflected on the experience of the story and found that various experiences and memories were brought to mind.
I shared the thinking from Roger Schank that intelligent behavior means having stories to tell and knowing how to use them to relate to new experiences. We create understand by matching the stories we know with the new experiences we encounter. The more stories we know, the broader our capability for understanding.

We did a conversational story game in which we created constellations of stories using post-it notes. In 15 minutes we gathered 32 stories.
Discussion of the transfer of experience via story. the storyteller uses "involvement strategies" to create a virtual experience for the listener. Storytelling is the original virtual reality.