Over the past nine months of developing as a storyteller, I’ve found that I gravitate towards stories that ought to be inspiring or are at least strong calls to introspection. The first story I ever told for class was the Native American story of Omni, a boy who through death and the choices of his own siblings is eventually abandoned by his entire family. He eventually finds belonging with a wolf pack. This belonging Omni finds is so strong that when his brother happens upon Omni months later and pleads with Omni to come back, Omni runs away and eventually turns into a wolf as he wished. My hope is this story encourages people to never abandon those who are close to them and count on them, and shows how destructive that believing lies that your parents or authority figures tell you can be – especially when you actually believe in and act on those lies.
Stories of defiance grip me like almost no other type of story. When a character defies unjust authority or their peers for the right reasons, this moves me. I hope I tell stories like Friar Kapaun’s—the friar who continuously defied the orders and guns of his captors to keep hundreds of fellow soldiers safe and alive in their concentration camp during the Korean War—in such a way that moves people to think about how they should be defying authority and swimming against cultural streams around them that tells them to harm or ignore others. As a history teacher, I long for my students to be more than just aware of all the wars and unjust acts committed by powerful people. My hope is that my students will understand and remember history in a deeper way as I connect them to true characters who did the right, just, brave, defiant, compassionate thing in the face of the apathy, evil, or cowardice around them.
I move a lot, too much probably, during my stories. My voice is monotone. My face registers hardly any change inside of stories. At this point, I am frustrated to the point of being motivated to really improve as many aspects of my story content and presentation as possible. I hope that continued practice will show significant improvement because I long to inspire students, peers, neighbors, family, and leaders to make hard choices for the sake of seeing others flourish. I’m grateful to all the help and feedback that my friends, family, and teachers have so generously given.
(The image at the top and more information about Father Emil Kapaun can be found here.)
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