Everybody Has a Story E-Book

Torbjørn Ydegaard

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 176

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

"Everybody has a story, and it’s important to tell this story" – so goes a saying of Erin Gruwell, the founder of The Freedom Writer-pedagogy. This quote is now turned into a book-title – or actually into a series of books like this one in either English or Danish. "Everybody Has A Story" is a book based on The Freedom Writers methodology – in a double sense; the methodology was both taught to and implemented on a group international students at University College South-Denmark, Campus Haderslev. The book bears witness of young peoples lived lives across Europe, Russia, and Japan. It contains stories told in prose, poems as well as in drawings – and it contains stories about love, loss of love and loss of loved ones, about dreams of future lives and wonders of lives as such. And it tells stories about bullying, mental illness and simple strives just to be able to survive and live on.

Leseprobe

Contributors to the book

Anne-Kathrin Eicher

Carla Esteva Beloso

Charlotte Vercruysse

David McKenzie

Ekaterina Abramova

Enrique Gil Matos

Giulia Rogolino

Iana Posudnevskaia

Jeanette Rogall

Jeroen Demaeght

Joana Bildarratz Garate

Johanna Kröll

Jolien Winckelmans

Kaat Vanden Bossche

Katrin Grether

Kouhei Ozaki

Lubos Azór

Maitane Garbayo

Maria Rainer

Nina Trojer

Noriane Chevalley

Patrik Zilka

Radmila Begalová

Sara Engels

Sem Van Hamme

Sjoerd Vermeire

Sonja Zehntner

Teresa Gómez Donet

Tiana Sagaert

Tineke Herwege

Vera Moroz

Víctor Jose Pérez Jorge

Zhanna Kazeeva

Contents

Everybody Has a Story, Torbjørn Ydegaard

Another game together

I wonder if trees could see

My first summer camps

A hard decision

Ama

The Fantastical Adventure of the Lifelong Dream, the Stolen Passport and the Time Before the Sunset

I wonder why the time is running that fast

I wonder why the sky is blue

The story of one usual girl

Night Child

The brother I’ve never had

The Snow without You

On the floor

What I would read if you wrote me

European dream

My little world

A beacon of hope

Somebody to lean on

Chimeras and delusions

I wonder what I’m gonna be

Wanderlust

Birthday Suit

Remorse

Part of the world or not I deserve to be happy

New house occupation

One of those special people

Take your Pencil

In a men’s world

My life experiences

I wonder how it would be

The animal shelter

People (1)

Tuesday, the 7th of September in 2010

An Angel in Exile

I See Tears

Say goodbye to a person, who is still alive

A real goodbye

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Future

Wind

The Meadow

Johnny

My story

For my Erasmus friends

I wonder what you should do

People (2)

Dear. Truth

Be yourself, be different

The Box

I wonder what I’d be doing now

Life poem

How I met my boyfriend!

I wonder why

Life is too short!

I wonder how the sun can shine

A bit of chocolate cream

Inside

Tree

I wonder how it is to be another person

Orion

Up in the Air

Not only a Dream

Students’ evaluation remarks on the process of writing this book

Torbjørn Ydegaard

Everybody Has a Story

When I some years ago was looking for a film to use in my classes – I teach pedagogy at college-level – I ended up with a movie called Freedom Writers. It showed a lot of scenes illustrating all the didactical problems and decisions a teacher must face every day. And it showed how to encourage, engage, and enlighten at-risk teenagers coming from poor social backgrounds of all kinds. And most of all: the movie was based on a true story, and the teacher in the movie, Erin Gruwell, continued to work with her ideas of teaching and spread them to teachers from kindergarten to university and to school administrators and social workers.

Slowly I worked my way into the movie: I dissected it scene by scene and tried to integrate into my own teaching wherever I found it valuable. And I went ‘behind the scene’ and explored the web-site of the Freedom Writers Foundation and read the books written by Erin, her students and the Freedom Writer Teachers, that she had taught the methods. This was great inspiration!

In October 2012 I had the opportunity to go to Long Beach and visit Erin and the Foundation. Not even did I meet Erin and was taken by her warmth and openness, her eager to listen to my experiences using her methods transformed to Danish college environment, and her willingness to give from her own doings. I also met several of her students from the days at Wilson High – those students that actually wrote the Freedom Writers Diary, and that were portrait in the movie. It is a wild experience to meet people you ‘know’, or at least whose stories you know.

In June 2013 I returned to Long Beach. This time to participate in a Freedom Writers Institute to become a Freedom Writer Teacher myself! Again a wild experience! For five days we worked – or rather played, laughed and cried – our way through many of the exercises of the Freedom Writer methodology. Erin was heading all the five days. We were 24 participants: one from Rwanda, three from Europe (Germany, The Netherlands – and myself coming from Denmark) and the rest from Canada and the US. We were a mix of occupations, all of course related to education. And we were a mix of blacks, whites, First Nation people – and even an half aboriginal now living in Canada. To help her Erin had engaged several experienced Freedom Writer Teachers and about 25 of The Original Freedom Writers. In all workshops we were matched (carefully and deliberately – nothing was done by chance!) with an Original, and so we learned to know many of the persons behind the diary entries and movie-figures.

To me the most emotional experience was a group-session where we discussed Freedom Writer Diary #62. It is a story about a girl being raped in by a family-member. In our group were tree Original Freedom Writer-girls, all with scars from sexual abuse on their soul. One couldn’t tell us her story, even after 25 years or so. Another was raped by colleagues on a mission for the Army – and still she was proud of her job as a soldier! The third had a story similar to Diary #62. She had lost confidence in men in such a degree, that she had to live as a childless single – understandable, but to me still a loss of life and love.

Back home I am trying to implement the methods with even bigger eagerness than before. This book is an example on this. It is written by the international students at Campus Haderslev during the month of March and April 2014. The story of this process goes like this:

A new project has started: 35 international students from all over Europe, Russia and Japan will over the next 6 weeks be introduced to the Freedom Writer-methodology and at the same time write and publish their stories.

Day 1. We started out with several exercises. In the first one the students had to write the shortest possible stories they could – one-liners about themselves:

Self-development, energy, freedom – the most important in my life. Believe in yourself! I am the mother of many and at this moment my priority is to raise them so they can reach their potential. If you don’t travel, you only see one chapter of the book. Goals are important for your self-fulfillment. I like to get to know different points of view and other cultures. Too many decisions to make. I’m like a tree with knots, past experiences have cut me into my current shape. I like to see the joy in the children’s eyes when they are fascinated by something. Past is always running after you but you have to live the present and build the future smiling to chances that life gives you. I like to be cozy inside with a fresh backed cake with my friends or my family and a couple of candles. I am a social person because I am used to share with my brothers. Music keeps me going in life. Life is music. You can’t buy happiness but you can play the guitar and this is almost the same! Letter and words are like a mixed soup for me! I am a daisy in the sunshine! I think it is important for me to accept anything.

Then we made a Wall of Dreams where hopes for the future were posted and eventually presented:

I will be more than just another teacher. Our school will be more than just another school. Tomorrow will be more than just another day. Find out what I really want and where to go. Happy life near the ocean (LA-city f.ex.). Be realized as worker, woman, mother, aunt etc.. Go to Antarctica and see penguins. Travel with my backpack in Peru, China, Scotland… To become a good father for my kids. Still want to be a superhero – ‘boys will be boys’! I want to travel to Australia and I want to become a professional surfer! In the future I hope to be in a place where I can use my skills and teaching to the heart of those less privileged and give them hope…. I did my best, I like where I am, I like who I am. My future is now. I want to work aboard. I want to start again playing the cello! I want to live in a cozy, white house with the one I love and my two kids. During the day I will be at my tea- and warehouse to welcome everyone with warmth and care. Be with the people I love for as long as I can. See more of the world. My biggest dream is to never stop dreaming. In 10 years I have a big family, three kids and a house full of people on holidays. Find inner peace, win the boxing with myself and let the past rest. Discover new places. Feeling confident and not left out. I have a wonderful family with 3 children. I travelled through the whole world. I changed the school system of Austria.

These exercises gave an impression of who they are as personalities. But even though you have a personality and feel yourself unique, you at the same time live a life parallel to many other lives. This was shown in the Line Game, which is one of the methods shown in the film. The students stand on each side of a line, the teacher ask questions, and whenever you can respond positive to the question you step forward to line for a short moment. Some of my questions were:

You come from a family of skilled workers

Your parents got divorced before you left secondary school

Your electricity, gas, or water has been turned off at your home

You have lived with only your mother or your father

You have been judged because of your ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation

You have ever been suspended from school

You have ever done something you knew was wrong just to impress your friends

You or someone you know has a learning disability

You or someone you know is, or has been, homeless

You have ever felt lonesome

You or someone you know has tried to commit suicide

You know (at home) where to get drugs

You know someone who is in a criminal gang

You or someone you know has been to juvenile hall or prison

You have ever heard a gunshot in your neighborhood

You have lost a friend to gang violence

At last we saw the Freedom Writer movie. I made two stops during the film. First stop was during scene 4 just before the shooting. I asked the students to step into Erin’s shoes and define her core problem, the reasons for it and the consequences of it. This made the students really think about the task of teaching. They filled the blackboard with great mind-maps!

Then just before the Line Game scene I asked them how to overcome the problems and what signs to look for in the class to see if the suggested solutions actually would work out. Again they came up with very constructive ideas, often very close to what happens in the film. Then we saw the rest of the movie - and that was it for the first day.

Day 2. We started out with the Getting to know you Bingo. All the one-liners from the first session were written on a hand-out, and they had to figure out who wrote what, and to get signatures from the authors of every one-liner. It was total chaos when everybody was asking everybody, but the stories started to pop up – and they claimed to have nothing to write about!

Then they were ready for the writing process! First they had to rewrite the one-liners into a sentence with an interposed sentence – difficult, but most of them got some kind of text going.

The Wall of Thanks helped them even more to see into themselves. Here are some of their thanks:

Thank you to the lady of pupil support who gave me the life –changing advice in 9th grade! I will give my ‘thank you’ to one of my friends. Maybe you abandoned me but the time I spent with you was really good and unforgettable. Thank you Mom and Dad (Mama and Papa) for loving me no matter what. Thank you for all you have done for me. For all those advises at 01:00 am and for your support in the good and bad moments. Thank you for always loving me although there were times where I’ve been horrible to you… I want to say thank you to a friend who said that I must go on and don’t give up. Thanks to my mum because she really helped me to take important decisions in my life and guide me into a better future. Lot of loves! Thank you, Dad. We had few times together and I hadn’t the possibility to tell you before. You sweet innocent, insecure girl with so many doubts on yourself, thank you for being always there for me – even in times when I don’t deserve your caring attention. Thanks to my sister, because she is always with me, in the bad and good moments and I know she never will leave me alone. Thank you for all sister, you are my reason for to be better each day. Thank you Kobe for being there for me in the times I needed you most. You don’t know how much it means to me that I can call you my brother! Thank you Nina for being a friend in all situations (also for looking after me, when I’m drunk and so on…). You enrich my life and you make me happy.

Suddenly they are not at all just these young, rich, and beautiful students they pretend to be! They are vulnerable and exposed, too.

Making a Sandwich is always funny and surprising. I will not disclose the secrets of the little role-play, but it involves sandwiches, a bow tie and Lady and the Tramp! The point is to create a framework for the story. The students got, and there stories began to take form.

On day 3 we started out interviewing each other using the Open Head illustration in order to give new insights, by letting ‘strangers’ ask questions – and by being honest with the answers. I had my Line Game questions on the screen as a help.

The first editing of the stories was done as pair-work were students two-and-two worked on their drafts. The idea was to elaborate the stories, to form them according to the Sandwich-model and eventually to incorporate insights from the interviews.

The last and to many the most challenging of the Wall-exercises was the Wall of Secrets. Some of the answers:

I’m sometimes not as happy as I pretend to be. I tried to commit suicide, but at the end I couldn’t do it. I’m in love with 2 guys. Sometimes I don’t know what is real and what happened only in my imagination. Then things start going the wrong way. There are days when I just want to leave everything behind and take a plane or train to a place where nobody can find me. Start all over again. When I feel really bad I need to feel the inside pain outside – to suffer in a ‘physical’ way. I feel insecure about myself all the time. I often feel left-out. Few years ago I broke into a house and police almost picked me. They asked me questions but they didn’t have any prove. Nobody knows that I really did. I’m probably gay! I’m very insecure. I don’t like lesbians. Sometimes I am really jealous of my sister. I love sex very much.

Day 4. The stories are finished. We decided to keep them anonymous in the book, just putting the country at the head of each story. And we then put all the names of the students in the front of the book.

We then warmed up for a new assignment by watching some of the extra material from the FW-movie: The story behind the story, The Freedom Writer Family, Deleted scenes/Another class-trip and Making a Dream. I read Diary #78, which is a poem, and gave the assignment: Write a poem for a poetry slam. It has to start with the words: “I wonder…” Make graffiti on a flip-over to accompany the poem. Both poem and graffiti will be in the book.

Day 5. The graffiti-posters were finished and photographed. And those who dared read their poems load for class. Poems, posters and stories were put together in a random order in what will become the book. We looked it all through to correct names and countries.

Day 6 – last day of the process: The last corrections were done, the text converted into a pdf-file and skipped to the printing house. The book-cover were finished too, and skipped. And in this way the book was done.

One of the things that Erin stated over and over again during the Institute was: Everybody has a story – and it’s important to tell this story. This quote is now turned into a book-title – or actually into a series of books like this one in either English or Danish. The book you are now holding in your hands is the second book is this series, and the first in English.

Switzerland

Another game together

What about this one? “, I asked but he just shook his head and said no. So we waited for another one. It was a wonderful day, the sun was shining, and we spent the whole afternoon together. Our parents let us take the bus on our own and we spent the time at a Turkish beach. In the water we played “our” self-invented game: sliding the waves with our air mattress. Oh, how we loved it! It was great! We played it for hours and each of us has had his own role in it. My part was rather unimportant but I suggested sliding on the approaching waves whereas my brother had to decide whether we are going to take this one or not. For me it seemed like we waited a long time for the right one but when the moment came we jumped on the air mattress and floated until we laid there in the sand.

Everyone who could see us saw that we were different. My big brother was much taller than me because he was already a teenager with his 17 years. I was a tiny little girl with long dark brown hair at the age of 10. For me it was just my brother and me. But I knew that we weren’t the same.

Soon in my childhood I realized that we had a special relationship which wasn’t only caused by the big difference of the age. Seven years were between us. He has always been really interested in lot of things; especially the natural sciences fascinated him. A lot of his spare time he spent outside in the forest to observe the local wildlife. Once he discovered something, he wanted to explore it exactly to know as much as possible about it. This also fits quiet well with his huge interest in mathematics and numbers. For me it wasn’t that important. I spent a lot of time playing and being together with my friends. In the years of primary school I didn’t like it to be alone. I wanted to decide together with others and that we could help each other. My days were filled with activities which I just wanted to do at the moment. I couldn’t focus on one topic for a long time. This was certainly a characteristic