An important part of your coursework will be keeping a journal that allows you to track class activities, prepare stories for telling, and explore your personal connections to story and storytelling.

For this journal, you will need some sort of binder or portfolio in which you can collect loose pages.  Every Monday (or the first class period of the week) you will receive a journal assignment to be collected the following Monday.

The journal will be worth 200 points toward your final grade.  You will decide how many points you wish to earn by choosing how many of the assignments to complete.  A complete journal will earn 200 points.  An incomplete journal will lose 10 points for each missing assignment.

Divide your journal into the following sections for easy reference:

• Personal connections to storytelling (there will be 14 entries)
• Reviews of books and online resources related to storytelling (you will be asked to review at least 3 books and 3 online resources to be added to our list of storytelling resources)
• Class notes and activities
• Reviews of storytelling events and/or guest speakers (there will be at least 3 entries)
• Great and inspiring quotes about storytelling and/or lines from stories you read and hear this semester (we will do an extremely cool project with these!)

If you should miss receiving a weekly assignment, it will be posted here.

On the data sheet you completed at the beginning of the course, you were asked why you are taking a course in storytelling.  Please think more deeply about that question in your journal.  Of all the many courses you could have chosen to satisfy certain degree requirements, why did you choose this course?  Where did your experiences with and interest in storytelling begin?  Reach as far back in your memory as you can to consider your earliest exposure to storytelling.  Looking forward, what are you hoping to gain from taking this course? 

Journal #2

Please complete and turn in one of your print or online resource critique forms.

The following questions are intended to get you started thinking about stories you might want to research and share. 
 

• With which cultural and/or ethnic traditions do you and your family identify? 
• Can you recall a relative who told you stories that came from your cultural and/or ethnic traditions? 
• List the stories you loved as a child, whether they were told to you or whether you read them from a book. 
• Which of these stories might “belong” to your cultural tradition or might have an equivalent in your cultural tradition?  (For example, many cultures have Cinderella stories, great flood stories, and so on.) 
• Are there a couple of stories on your list that you feel a particular attachment to? 
• If you are coming up blank on the previous questions, how might you go about researching stories from your cultural tradition? 

Choose one of the following options: 
 

• Who are the best storytellers you have ever known personally (e.g., friends, family members, co-workers, clergy, teachers, coaches, etc.)?  What qualities made them so effective, and what stories do you remember hearing from them?  (You don’t have to retell the stories—just jot down a phrase that will trigger your memory of each story.)  Did they have certain qualities or techniques that you can use when you tell? 
• If you have selected a folk or literary tale from your culture to prepare to share with the class, try researching the origins of the tale.  Folk tales exist in many forms and versions—read or listen to several, and note what you especially like or dislike in each source.  Do you know of similar stories that follow the same pattern or have similar characters?  Is this a story that appears in many cultures around the world (e.g., the Cinderella story, the great flood story, the trickster story, etc.)? 

Journal #4

Please complete and turn in one of your print or online resource critique sheets. 

Please choose one of the following: 
 

• Think back to your early experiences with reading, both in school and in other areas of your life.  Were you helped and/or hindered in your reading by the adults around you?  Who stands out in your memory (for bad or for good)?  What are the most powerful memories you have of reading as a child? 
• Write on one of the following story prompts, taken from Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keene and Anne Valley-Fox: 
• Imagine that you are invisible for a few days.  What do you do? 
• You accidentally take a drug that erases all inhibitions and morality for one week, along with your accountability.  You are perfectly free.  What do you do for seven days? 
• When hiking in the mountains, you notice a cave in a wall of granite.  You crawl up to the opening and look into the darkness.  In the distance you hear running water and a voice calling out, “Let me out!  Let me out!”  So you decide to . . . . 

Journal #5

This is an experiment in point-of-view and how it can alter the way a story is told.  Think of a favorite folk or literary tale.  You might want to try this with the story from your own culture that you are preparing to tell.  Write the story from the point-of-view of a different character or even an object from the story.  For example, how would the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff be different if the troll under the bridge were telling it?  How would Coyote tell one of his trickster adventures? 

Or if you prefer, retell a personal story from someone else’s perspective. 
 

Journal #6

 Please complete and turn in one of your print or online resource critique sheets. 

Telling Your Own Stories by Donald Davis gives you lots of prompts to help you remember personal stories.  It can also be used to suggest questions you might want to ask of older relatives to collect their stories. 

Begin compiling a list of personal stories you might want to tell for the class.  You don’t need to write the whole story—just jot down a phrase or sentence that will trigger your memory of the story. 
 

Journal #7

Choose one personal story from your list (or perhaps a better idea has occurred to you since then) that you want to develop to tell for the class.  Think about the elements of story we talked about in class.  Now answer the following questions about your story, including plenty of detail for you to work with as you develop your story: 
 

• What do you love about this story? 
• What do you hope your listeners will gain from your story? 
• What background does the listener need to be able to understand your story? 
• How will you introduce it? 
• Who are the important characters in this story? 
• Where does the story take place?  How will you "draw" the setting with words? 
• What are the important actions that make up the plot? 
• What is the climax of the story? 
• How will you conclude?  Does your story have a message, a moral? 
• What reaction would you like to get from your listeners? 

Please complete and turn in one of your print or online resource critique sheets. 

Take your pick of the following (or do more than one if you like).  You might need to consult other people—especially older relatives—to gather the information that you need.  That is a good thing--for you and for them! 
 

• Find out the story of your name.  What is the derivation of your family name?  Who gave you your first and middle names?  Why?  Were you named after someone?  Was there disagreement about what your names should be?  Did anyone give you nicknames, and if so, what were they and how did you feel about them?  Do you feel your names suit you well? 
• Find out the migration history of your family.  If you come from an immigrant culture, what do you know about how your family got here?  Where have they lived, and how did they adjust to their new lives?  Even if your family didn’t migrate from another country to the United States, they might have an interesting history of migrating from one state to another, or one region to another.  Look back as many generations as you can. 
• Has anyone ever said to you, "When I was your age . . ."?  If so, track down that person and ask again, "What was your life like when you were my age?"  If not, find a relative or friend from another generation, and ask that question. 

This is a two-part exercise, but I can give you only the first part right now.  Write a quest story in which a hero or heroine goes on a journey to find something or solve a problem.  Begin your story this way:  “Once upon a time, there was a girl/woman/boy/man who . . . .”  When you turn this in, I will explain the second part of this experiment. 
 

Journal #10

OK, here is the second part of the exercise you began in your journal last week.  Go back over your story, and insert your name in place of the main character.  See what, if anything, this story reveals about your life experiences, values, beliefs, goals, archetypes, and recurring themes?  Does it tell, perhaps in a symbolic way, of the quest YOU are on?
 

Journal #11

Please complete and turn in one of your print or online resource critique sheets. 

Choose a photograph that you love, a photograph that records a particular memory that you love to recall when you look at it.  Write the story of the photograph—when it was taken, by whom, why, who or what is in the photo, what was going on outside the frame when the photo was taken, and so on.

Please attach a copy of the photo (this can be a Xerox copy since I don’t want to lose your heirloom photos!) to your journal entry.

Journal #12

Think back to your childhood, and remember the oldest person you knew.  Write about this person:

• Who was the person?  What this person a relative, a friend, a neighbor?
• How well did you know this person?
• What do you remember about the way this person looked, dressed, talked and acted?
• Did this person ever share any stories with you or tell you anything about “back when I was your age”?

Please complete and turn in one of your print or online resource critique sheets. 

The following exercise, taken verbatim from Sam Keene and Ann Valley-Fox’s book Your Mythic Journey is designed to develop the creative power of your imagination.  Try this.  Please include both your drawing and your answers to these questions in your journal:
 

• Draw a detailed floor plan of a house you lived in before you were ten.
• As you enter each room, imagine the furniture, pictures, smells, and events you associate with the room.
• Where were your secret places?  (Where did you stash your comic books or go when you wanted to be alone?)
• Who lived in the house with you?
• What was the dominant mood in the household?
• Which rooms are you unable to reconstruct in your memory?  Why do you think you forgot them?
• Are there rooms you can’t enter?

Think back over your experiences in this class, and answer the following questions:
 

• Have your feelings and ideas about storytelling changed in any way?  How and why?
• Do you find yourself telling stories more often now than you did before taking this class?
• Do you see ways that you might use storytelling in the future in your personal, professional, and/or academic life?  Give some examples.
• What were the best and most memorable moments from this class?  What great lines do you recall?

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