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"We share our lives through stories: Stories of day to day events, struggle, outrage, hope, pain, happiness or misery, pleasure, failure, and triumph. Through telling stories, we seek validation and try and find common ground. Stories can promote positive or negative cultural traits: inclusiveness or exclusiveness; innovation or the status quo, suspicion or good will, or sharing or hoarding."

These insights come from an article, "Growing Another Organizational Culture: The Power of Stories," by Jim Greenman in the Beginnings Workshop section on "The Power of Stories" in the May 2008 issue of Exchange. Greenman continues...

"Stories are how we transmit our truth, our insight, and our commitment. The more we dig into our experience, the more personal we are, and the more universal the appeal. Stories are informational and emotional. The right story for the right audience creates sticky insights that fuel the outcomes that we desire.

"An event isn’t a story, but it can become one: woven into a story with a beginning, characters, and a close. Anecdotes and examples are also not stories. But they, too, can grow into a story and are also useful in and of themselves in creating a vivid, visual, or emotional image for people to remember.

"Shared stories and examples become part of the common wisdom. What’s the story we ask? Stories create a narrative for the center �" a sense of a shared past and present. What kind of stories? Stories of heroic effort on behalf of a child or family: staying late, extra phone calls, or bringing resources; or stories of overcoming failure and successful change. Stories that reflect staff behaving at their best as defined by program mission and values."

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The latest 16-page Beginnings Workshop, "The Power of Stories," is now on sale along with all 86 Beginnings Workshop units. Here are just a few of the topics addressed in these valuable training tools:

• Building Self-Image
• Brain Research
• Gender Issues
• Circle Time
• Projects and Themes
• Observing Children
• Building Literacy
• Make-Believe Play
• Nature and Young Children

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