The Stories that Bind Us

After reading the article “The Stories that Bind Us” I agree with what the article said. The findings were that if children know about their family’s background they are more able to deal with stress better and perform better when faced with challenges. I agree that children need to know the stories of their families and it is not always good to “hide the skeletons in the closet”, it is part of their family history and things should not be pushed under to rug. Sometimes it is the challenges that can pull a family together and make them even stronger. The article also discussed that fact that corporations are developing mission statements for their employees so that they too can work better and form stronger alliances, and having one for the family will work too. This I am not so sure maybe a good idea because unfortunately people do die or move away and generations change and new families are created. Having a strong sense of family instilled at a young age, and nothing hidden from each other I believe will give children the strength they need to grow and mature, and is one of the best things you can do for your children.

As for using the implications of the study to create projects for students I believe might be hard. First of all I plan on teaching very low functioning students with autism (basically I will be teaching daily living skills) and their cognitive ability for this type of project will probably not be up to par. If however, I am in a classroom that will allow for this type of project, I think I would have the students develop a family tree and then let them present it to the class with one story from their family about struggles that might have occurred. Once the students have presented all their stories I think I would then have an open discussion on how the things that have happened in the families can help to create success for themselves and or their family.

 1. Storytelling is a great way for children to learn lessons, ways to navigate through social norms of the world and most important reading, comprehension and language. They identify key images and important moments by keeping it simple and the endings have an important point to take away, or an answer to a real problem. Both of these stories contained these points and are very well presented so that children can make real life connections, giving an even stronger understanding of the world around them. These two stories are not only educational but entertaining as well. By having stories entertaining it keeps the child or children focused on the story.  

2. While watching the Russian story The Four Friends the first time I was reminded of one of Aesop’s fables, The Lion and the Mouse. In the Russian story the mouse was the one animal that was able to rescue other animals from hunters. In The Four Friends, however there was a stronger moral of friendship and how all the animals worked together to help each other. The crow tells the story of how the mouse rescued a group of doves and after that the deer gets caught. When the deer does not return to meet with his friends the crow goes looking for him and finds him in a net. The crow carries the mouse back to chew through the net and while this is happening the tortoise gets caught. The deer then pretends to be dead so the hunter goes to him. The mouse has rescued the tortoise and then the deer runs off. The hunter gets so scared that he then runs away.

In The Lion and the Mouse, the mouse was also able to rescue the lion after being captured by hunters. I felt that the Russian story, however gave a stronger moral to the meaning of friendship and “don’t underestimate the strength of the little people”. 

3. Bedtime stories are a great way for children to prepare not only for school but other environments as well. It will also prepare them for participation in a literacy setting. “A bedtime story is a major literacy event which helps set patterns of behavior that recur repeatedly through the life of mainstream children and adults”. There are seven ways that a child learns from having been read to. It teaches children to give attention to books, acknowledges questions about books, and teaches them to respond to conversational allusions of the content of the books. Children also learn to use their knowledge of what books do to legitimate their departures from truth, they learn to accept book and book related activities as entertainment, and preschoolers learn to announce their own factual and fictive narratives. By the time children are usually three years old they have also learned to listen and wit as an audience. One of the first ways is that a child learns how to interact which is very important for school. When a child is being read to, very frequently the reader will ask the typical “wh” questions and the child will answer which fosters “alternate turns in dialogue”, and “ is socialized into the initiation-reply-evaluation sequences which is the structural feature of a classroom”. Storytelling also fosters labeling of objects which will teach the child how to resolve conflict between two dimensional and three dimensional objects. But one of the most important elements that storytelling will teach is “reading for comprehension. Without being able to understand what is being read can impact a child and their learning not just in school, but for the rest of their life.

After watching the video Becoming American and listening to the stories of how the casts families came to America, I realized I could never have made the trips. One person's grandmother came from I believe Ireland and spent 3 weeks in steerage. The immigrants of that time must have had a strong determination  to come here in search of a better life to be able to make those trips. Most of those people left their families behind, knowing that they would never see them again, "slamming the doors on the past, leaving no trace to their roots". The sacrifices they made amaze me.  Once they got here a lot of them faced such hostility but yet they persevered, not realizing the impacts that they were making on future generations and helping to make America, as Steven Colbert said "great".  I am not really sure when my families came to America but I am very thankful that they did so that eventually I was able to grow up in America. It scares me to think that is just one of my ancestors never made the trip or had something happen to them on the trip that it could have changed generations after them.

Dr.Oz stated in the beginning of the video "it's spectacular that you have the opportunity to marry cultures together because win you can see the world from different perspectives you are better off"and I    whole heartedly agree with him. I love the fact that America is built on a "melting pot".