This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 101 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, I'm going to share a step-by-step plan for teaching narrative writing.

Those who tell the stories rule the world.

This proverb attributed to the Hopi Indians is one I wish I had known a long time ago

because I would have used it when teaching my students the craft of storytelling.

With a well-tolled story, we can help a person see things in an entirely new way.

We can forge new relationships and strengthen the ones we already have.

We can change a law, inspire a movement, make people care fiercely about things they had never

given a passing thought. But when we study storytelling with our students, we forget all that,

or at least I did. When my students asked why we read novels and stories and why we wrote personal

narratives and fiction, my defense was pretty lame. I probably said something about the importance

of having a shared body of knowledge or about the enjoyment of losing yourself in a book,

or maybe about the benefits of having writing skills in general.

I forgot to talk about the power of story. I didn't bother to tell them that the ability to tell

a captivating story is one of the things that makes human beings extraordinary.

It's how we connect to each other. It's something to celebrate, to study, to perfect.

If we're going to talk about how to teach students to write stories, we should start by thinking

about why we tell stories at all. If we can pass that on to our students, then we will be going

beyond a school assignment. We will be doing something transcendent. In this episode, I'll share

the process I used to teach my students narrative writing. Eleven steps that take them from

prewriting all the way to final publication. I used this process with middle school students,

but it would work with any age group. If you're not a writing teacher, you might still be

...