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In her recent article, “A Story Festival,” Donna King shares, “At Children First, storytelling and acting—inspired by the work of Vivian Paley—has been central to our teaching.” She shares how they found “a wonderful way to culminate a year of storytelling and acting—a way for kids to demonstrate in front of their caring ‘public’ the capacities they had been working on in the privacy of the small classroom community all year… kids would ‘cast’ their stories with actors from the whole school community, a community we had spent the year helping them come to know.”

King continues, “We have come to understand that the reach and power of this relatively simple celebration may be even greater than we had imagined. Here is my sense of [some of] what, consciously and unconsciously, children might be taking away from this experience of having their stories acted and witnessed in the circle of community. ”

• I matter. My ideas, my feelings, and my creative work matter. And my contribution to staging the work of my friends, and witnessing and applauding the work of my friends matters, too.
• I belong. My voice, my body, my work, my SELF absolutely has a place sitting in this circle, and standing at the center of this circle.
• I can make people laugh—WITH me, not AT me. I can make people gasp, and cheer, and breathe a deep sigh of relief. I have the power to share and generate real emotion.

Read King’s entire article to learn more about the Story Festival and a bonus piece on ‘Story Medicine.’ And catch King live as she and her mentor Pam Oken-Wright share their insights from a year of Pursuing Bad Guys, in a free ECI Webinar tomorrow, June 15, at 2 pm Eastern time.

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