Story Telling, Showing, and Being

For my latest story telling endeavor. I chose Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A cuban folktale to do a story-telling without the book. As I reviewed  this title for a different class and turned the pages the characters jumped out at me.  How could a cockroach be beautiful.  Even though the pictures are iridescent and breathtaking, the story was engaging and offered a different story of trust and family. What a find it was for my folk take list. It is important to have  different stories from all over the world.  To execute a story telling without a book I was searching for a simple storyline, strong characters and a message in the end.  This story also used some spanish words that I thought would also be important to use in the  telling.   Taking notes of the characters, voices started to  form in my head.    I listed the setting and the format of the story to help guide it and I numbered the suitors of Martina along with some...

  In starting a search for different blogs to follow I was looking for eclectic or off beat geared towards teens, or juvenile level.    Being a middle school teacher you are aware of the specific and unique needs of this age group.  They are full of hormones and want to be driving all while second guessing their place in this world.   Throw in a Pandemic which has stunted this groups social emotional learning and we have a delicate balance that must be maintained to ensure the meeting of these students needs.  To put it in perspective my current 8th graders had their last normal year in the 5th grade.   Anything thing that was going to help guide this year and invigorate my teaching I used because we were all stunted.    Teen Services Underground is run by 6 different librarians across the nation.  There was previous group of leaders.   It is unclear how they are chosen but their eclectic backgrounds as well as t...