Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome to the Journalistic Learning Podcast where we talk with teachers who are leading journalistic learning projects in their classrooms.
Speaker: Hey there, I'm Beau Brusco, a former ELA teacher and multimedia journalist.
Speaker: Today's episode I think is one of my favorites and it's about the power of stories.
Speaker: In continuing our chat with Oregon-based 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teacher Cora Moore, this time around I start asking Cora about the different sort of items I see in the background in her classroom and the stories behind them.
Speaker: And each one has a personal resonance with her and honestly, when I was listening back to this episode, it still feels special to me.
Speaker: We also touched on the transformative nature of the journalistic learning approach.
Speaker: You know, a lot of approaches out there might be considered transformative in different ways, but what's so, I think, unique and powerful about journalistic learning is the observable widening of student perspectives as they begin to grapple with the nuances of the stories they're researching and investigating.
Speaker: Anyways, let's jump back into it already.
Speaker: As we're talking, I can't help but notice we're talking about a journalistic approach in the ELA classroom.
Speaker: And you have, it looks like a news article framed in the corner of the classroom there.
Speaker: What is that?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: So actually, that is a news article that was written about my dad.
Speaker: It says kids grieve for classroom volunteer.
Speaker: He died when I was 10 and he spent a lot, a lot of time in my classroom.
Speaker: And I was with my mom over the holidays last year and we found this clipping and he's just a really big part of why I'm a teacher in the classroom.
Speaker: And so it was just really special for me to get to put that on display.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: I think nice for a few of the kids have asked about it and they're like, oh, that's really cool.
Speaker: Just to know a little bit about my motivation and why I'm here for them.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's a very heartwarming piece to have.
Speaker: To me, it just seems like it's tying everything together.
Speaker: It's tying your sort of intrinsic identity in the classroom as well as journalism and news reporting, but also storytelling and storytelling.
Speaker: And the way we can sort of honor people and their experiences through that medium.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's beautiful.
Speaker: Ed asked earlier about the Waldorf tie-in.
Speaker: And now that you say that, a huge part of Waldorf philosophy is storytelling and learning through storytelling.
Speaker: And so I think that that is really a wonderful connection between our school's personal philosophy and my philosophy as a teacher and this journalistic learning and learning how to tell a story that's not just a fiction story, that's a real life story that's happening in our community and affects us personally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, not to get too philosophical, but I really think storytelling is everything when it comes to just being human.
Speaker: Because, I mean, when you think about it, I don't want to go off on a tangent, but, you know, even our own memories, our own capacity to remember things accurately is very limited.
Speaker: So even our memories really are just stories that we tell ourselves about the past that we didn't
Speaker: We can't be 100% certain that they're true.
Speaker: So we do have to realize that storytelling impacts us in ways that we're not even consciously aware of half the time.
Speaker: So being able to communicate effectively one story is an integral part of, I just think, success in so many arenas in life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And thinking back to teachers that I really connected with, they were the storytellers.
Speaker: You know, they're the ones I remember.
Speaker: Yeah, my history teacher, I remember junior year of high school, I wasn't a great student.
Speaker: We all know that teachers, people who become teachers either love school or hated school, and I was the latter.
Speaker: But I did have one teacher last period, my junior year of high school, that got me to come to class every day because he taught history.
Speaker: But it wasn't just like a history class reading from a textbook.
Speaker: It was the first half hour of the class was all just storytelling.
Speaker: You know, it's all just sharing stories of the past that I just found so gripping and enchanting, really.
Speaker: So, yeah, storytelling.
Speaker: It's incredible.
Speaker: A funny story from last year.
Speaker: I had told this kids this story earlier in the year, and I have lived in Oregon my whole life, but my husband is in the Coast Guard.
Speaker: So over the last 10 years, we have lived also in Hawaii and New Orleans.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So moving to New Orleans, I saw for the first time in my life an armadillo.
Speaker: And
Speaker: They're really, really weird.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very, very strange animals.
Speaker: And so I looked at my own children and I was like, I don't think that's real.
Speaker: I'm still not convinced.
Speaker: I'm looking at it and I'm still not convinced.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure they're robots.
Speaker: And so it just kind of became a joke in our family about the armadillos are robots.
Speaker: And I have a
Speaker: armadillo in my class oh yeah um and so he's kind of our class mascot and I had told the kids this story earlier in the year and they're like armadillos are real Mrs. Mora and I was like jokingly like no type in armadillos are robots and you'll find pictures of armadillos being robots and um and then we came to the lesson um
Speaker: in the sift method that I think birds aren't real comes up.
Speaker: And some of them kind of were like, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker: I kind of get it.
Speaker: And then somebody was like, that's kind of like your armadillos aren't real theory, Mrs. Moore.
Speaker: Oh, calling you out.
Speaker: Call me out.
Speaker: And so just that funny little story that I was able to share earlier in the year actually kind of made that moment in the curriculum come alive.
Speaker: And the next day I had a student show up with a bunch of armadillos aren't real stickers, which he passed out to everybody.
Speaker: And then, of course, we had to explain this to everybody who wasn't involved.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So they had to reiterate all their learning to their parents and their other teachers and, you know, friends and other grades.
Speaker: And so that was one of my one of my favorite moments.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I love that.
Speaker: It made it into the yearbook.
Speaker: Oh, did it really?
Speaker: For them, too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, what a great way to bring personal application for the kids into the lesson.
Speaker: And I also see behind you, you have be kind, be brave, be you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: One of our school, our school motto.
Speaker: That's a school motto.
Speaker: You know what's interesting, and you don't have to run with this idea if you don't want to, but as we've been talking about journalistic learning, I've been reflecting on that sort of edict of the school.
Speaker: And to me, it does guide a lot of journalism ethics because being kind is considering the impact of your story, right?
Speaker: And trying to reduce harm, right?
Speaker: Being brave is being brave enough to tell the truth.
Speaker: even when it's inconvenient or not what everyone wants to hear.
Speaker: And then lastly, being you is so important because you're not just honoring you yourself and your authenticity, but honoring people's stories, like the story you have in the frame over there, and realizing that there are real people and real perspectives that matter in every story.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that was really one of the most powerful parts of the project was the connections that we made with people and the stories that we heard.
Speaker: And I do feel like it made my students kinder and more understanding students.
Speaker: And humans.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, right.
Speaker: Because and I love because, you know, in this, I hope this doesn't come across as political because it's not at all.
Speaker: It's just it's very much a matter of fact that kids just regurgitate what they hear over the dinner table.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It doesn't matter what who you're.
Speaker: politically aligned with.
Speaker: That's just the case.
Speaker: On either side.
Speaker: And so when kids get to bring that into the classroom and they're so passionate about it because they've been hearing about it every night and that's how they've come to, they've sort of adapted that, assimilated that worldview of their parents, right?
Speaker: And when they get to come in and realize that, you know, I don't want to say realize that their parents are wrong or anything like that, but realize that there is more to the story.
Speaker: Realize that it is more nuanced than
Speaker: than what they may have previously anticipated.
Speaker: I know I had one group last year that looked at racism in our community.
Speaker: And I continually just, I kept hearing this,
Speaker: racism isn't a problem in our community, like from the people around them.
Speaker: So they're working on this project.
Speaker: And I kept hearing, Mrs. Moore, why are they doing that?
Speaker: It's not a problem in our community.
Speaker: And so for them to have somebody to come in and like, tell them about some of the problems with that in our community was really eye opening it for them.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I bet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's where we're going to end today's episode.
Speaker: We have one more episode with Cora where she'll share with us her main takeaways and tips from her experience with journalistic learning.
Speaker: Thanks so much for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.
