Sometimes the right sequence of questions we use can lead us seamlessly into a story. When that happens, we hardly even notice that we went from an image into and through a story. At a workshop in St. Louis this week, three St. Louis teachers teamed up to demonstrate how this can happen:
Monica developed a one word image of a pickle. She did a great job of making the one word image of the pickle interesting via speech. While that was happening, over in the artist’s chair Megan did a great job of making it interesting with her artwork since, as we know, the artist’s drawings have to be colorful, visually compelling, big so all can see it, simple and with strong, bold lines.
As soon as we looked at Megan’s pickle drawing – at the “Great Reveal” after Monica finished the image – we all loved it. It had personality. So those working with artists to do one word images in their classrooms are advised at all costs to find an artist who can make the image activity “speak” to the hearts of the students in the class. Without a sufficiently talented artist, this work can flounder.
The four questions that Monica asked to make the image so compelling were (1) big or small (our pickle was big), (2) what color (our pickle was green), (3) big or small face (ours was regular sized and happened to be on the lower backside of the pickle, and (4) sad or happy (our pickle was sad.) Note that sad is the best emotion for OWI drawings because kids love to then make it happy in the Invisibles story that follows the One Word Image process.
So upon the “Great Reveal” we all gave a round of applause amidst a lot of positive comments from the group and Monica took that opportunity to discuss the pickle even more. It was a great one word image and everyone was happy to have a new Invisible character as a member of the class. It went into the class “gallery” on the back of the wall, ready for possible inclusion in a future Invisibles story.
As we were sitting around smiling about the pickle, with Monica and Megan smiling extra happily because they knew that what they had created was so cool, John Becker, who also teaches in St. Louis County, then got up and said that he was going to make an Invisibles story based on the pickle. It was a good decision.
Now this requires a bit of explanation here. John could have done a fresh one word image or he could have done some Story Listening (a major focus of our workshops) or he could have just used one of the individually created characters that we had created that were now in the gallery on the back of the wall, but the energy with Pepe el Pepino was so good that John made the right decision to turn that one word image of Pepe into a story.
So, to be clear (and this is a very important point for those now using Invisibles because there is confusion on this point): we can create an Invisibles story from (1) a class created image (one word image), or (2) or from an individually created character – a character drawn at home by a student.
I guess I should have called the one word images “class created images” as suggested this week in St. Louis by Andrea Alford. But back in 2003 I didn’t know that they would evolve into something like the Invisibles. I didn’t know then that one day they would form a rich source of inspiration for stories.
Anyway, John got up there and it immediately became clear to our coaching group that we were watching a superstar in action, with a beautiful Spanish accent and perfect pacing and wonderful command over gesturing and, on top of that, a sense of mirth and mystery about what was about to happen. How could the story be boring when that kind ingredients go into the pickle soup?
Here is what John did with the one word image:
1. He strode to the front of the room with a sense of confidence and excitement about what we had created together.
2. He looked at the pickle.
3. Naturally, we all smiled because we loved our pickle. We were about to do expansive and creative work to create a story using our imaginations with no limits to what we could do. Nothing about what we were about to do was going to be predictable, reductive or boring, nor was it going to be related to some list that the teacher needed to teach us (this includes high frequency lists, thematic unit words, words from a textbook, or words pulled to backwards plan for the reading of a novel). We were going to have a conversation.
4. The characteristics of a conversation are: 1. It has a familiar nature (i.e. people who converse are familiar with each other); 2. It is improvised (i.e. not forced – made up as it goes along); 3. It is free (i.e. not limited in scope to any predetermined idea or scripted text); 4. has pleasure as its goal (i.e. we enjoy the conversation first and foremost); 5. It is made up of linguistic tissue (i.e. the target language for us); 6. It guarantees a person’s membership in the group (we cannot hope to teach a language in which there is no community. For me this means that the students have jobs and we talk about things they create and have expressed ownership of).
5. What John did, then, was consistent with what language is: unpredictable and expansive, with no agenda except to align with the national standard of Communication by using the ACTFL Three Modes of Communication, in particular the Interpersonal Skills mode, while aligning with the ACTF 90% use position statement. Imagine that – a curriculum not tied to a list of words somewhere, or a textbook, but rather one aligned with how languages are actually learned and with the research. This freedom, because the overarching goal is – or should be – Communication – allowed us, under John’s guidance, to enjoy a kind of egalitarian human quality of reciprocal and participatory heart centered sharing where no one person got to drive us in the direction of some kind of agenda. Since I had done that kind of teaching myself as a teacher for four decades (traditional AP and TPRS) I felt very happy to learn more about our pickle, about an adventure he had on the beach, with no restrictions, with no agenda. (After the story, I pointedly asked John if all the language he had used had emerged during the story and he said yes. He agreed with me that the fun of the story, its richness, its cuteness happened because we were free to go where we wanted during the story creation process that he led.)
6. Looking at the pickle there in front of the class, John started asking questions in very crisp fashion using very “light circling” (credit: Tina Harden):
7. First question was “Class, what is the pickle’s name?” (Pepe)
8. At this point, with sufficient – not too many and not too few – facts inherited from Monica, having only asked the pickle’s name, John ramped everything up by asking the Invisibles Questioning Level 4: “Class, where is the pickle?”
9. John got three quick suggestions: on the beach, in a jar, and in Los Angeles. So I put those together in my mind and suggested to John that Pepe was in a jar on a beach in Los Angeles. John smiled and said, “Correct, Ben, it’s obvious! The pickle is in a jar on a beach in Los Angeles!” I felt good that I could contribute to the class. John made me feel happy about being in the class.
10. By asking only two questions (name and where), John had gotten a story going in less than a minute from the time he stood up. Why is this important? It is because the students need and want closure within one class period on what happens in a story. They don’t like it when the story doesn’t finish in one period, so getting all the way up to QL4 (of 7 levels) in the Invisibles protocol by asking only a few questions (What is the pickle’s name? and Where is Pepe?) guaranteed a short and snappy story, well under the 25 minute window that we were looking for in our training session there in St. Louis.
11. John now asked for possible answers to Questioning Level 4, “With whom is the pickle?” (The power questions of “where” and “with whom” were proving their great value once again in this story.) The answer John went with was “with Tina the Toaster”. Of course, other things had been suggested but John chose the toaster because he was thinking ahead that if the pickle was going to get to go swimming the jar would have to be broken so that is why John took the answer of Tina the Toaster and not some soft object. (Tina was a one word image that had been created the previous day in this workshop by another teacher.)
12. So then all John had to do at that point was ask what happened next (Questioning Level 6 is resolving the problem (or not…) and the class all agreed that Tina broke the jar with her fists – Megan had given Tina two small fists coming out of each side of the toaster), so later when we did the Great Reveal there was this toaster with a determined look on its face in the second panel hitting the jar and then in the third panel the jar was broken and Pepe was heading happily for the water on his little pickle legs). John had ended the entire story in around 17 minutes.
13. For those curious, the next questioning level (7) in this Invisibles process, which we didn’t have time to do, would have been the filming of the “final product” video, just a short (5 to 7 min.) repeat of the story for the archivist and documentary filmmaker to use for the two end of year projects.
I thought it was a great story. Short, snappy, fun, great art work, a clever problem with a clever ending. We all had a good time. (And now there is a group called MO Liftoff, if anyone in Missouri wants to join.)