Long Ago (1972): A Little Lisper

Kindergarten Progress Report July 1972 (typo on report?)

Scanning down the typed progress report I am puzzled by the date. It says July 1971 and appears to be a checklist reporting on both mid-term and June Kindergarten progress. 1971 can't be right. I had just turned 5 in the summer of '71 and our school system did not have a Jr. Kindergarten program. The Catholic school up the road had one. My best friend went there. It was a funny thing to recall, but I remember I thought it was odd that she started school a whole year before I did. It is a typo or perhaps the teacher created this form in July of 71 and redistributed them the following year. I even go back and check the dates on the winter report card.
For the briefest of moments I wonder about the possibility that I failed Kindergarten and my parents covered it up. I feel like Doug Heffernan in the episode of "King of Queen's" where his parents reveal the truth to him about his year in "Super Kindergarten." Mom assures me that this was not the case. In fact, she asserts that it was quite the opposite.
Apparently there was talk about accelerating me two grades. The school had proposed that I return as a grade 3 student in the Fall. She tells me she did not want me skipped ahead because this had happened to her as a child. By the time she got to High school, she was still a little girl playing with dolls and was not at the same level of maturity as many of her classmates. She graduated and entered the working world at 15. She did not want the same for me.
I find this hard to believe. The checklist does not hint at this. It doesn't jump out at me as being exemplary in any regard. I am still reeling with the news of my messy writing with incorrect form and inattention to colouring comment from my winter report.
My mother's credibility as an accurate historian comes into question. She once went on record stating, "I wouldn't want you to get too thin" as I yet again joined Weight Watchers in my annual quest to lose 10, 30, 60, or 100 lbs. I am the person who sits in her doctor's office and tries to read my chart over his shoulder during a physical. I live in fear that beside weight he will write, "morbidly obese." So, mom's view and mine are simply not the same. Little white lies. Designed to make us feel better, but we never fully trust the word of the flatterer again.
I let little details bother me. I've been told that I "read into things too much." Just look at the time I've spent ruminating about one little date. Being accurate though with the dates, times, and settings of my own history helps me to recover memories within the context to which they belong.
Looking over this checklist, one criterion jumps right out at me. It reads "Speaks clearly and effectively" and my teacher has written "speech correction" in one term and checked it off as a "Yes" in the June column. I hadn't thought about my speech teacher in many, many years. This is the only documentation I have that reminds me of her existence during my school days.
My memory of her comes from grade one. I wonder if I regressed in my speech over that summer of '72.
It is clearly in the doorway of my grade one classroom that I am standing. It is beside my old Kindergarten classroom but further up the hallway and looks almost directly across to that mysterious room where the teachers go at recess. It is my pretty grade one teacher that I see. In my memory she always wears a blue and white checked mini dress, with her long blonde hair cascading down her back. Of course, this is what she is wearing in our class picture and I use this reference for my memory of her. She is tall and when she smiles at me her cornflower eyes wrinkle up at the edges and I know that she likes me.
I am frightened to be called to the door. I am not the type of student who is called out of class. Children sent to the door, or worse, out to the hallway, are known as "disturbances." Naughty children who are made to face the wall. Some are compliant and others jump up to make faces at us through the glass window cut into the door. Until now, the naughty children have all been boys. I can't imagine what I may have done to be called to the door.
It is unexpected and no one has prepared me for this visit from a stranger. She appears pleasant enough, but I am suspicious. She has hair like my mom's, only brown, not quite a beehive, but that weekly wash and set at the beauty parlor, that even when teased out with a comb you can still see where the roller made its little sausage look. She wears a blush pink sweater set with a cameo brooch. She must be very old. She wants to take me to a different room to do some work.
My heart feels heavy because for the first time I have a sense that there is something wrong with me. While I was naively ignorant of my messy writing and left-handedness the year before, this was proof that something significant was definitely wrong with me. But what was it?
It wasn't work with a pencil. I didn't have to read from books or flashcards. I was made to speak my ABC's and hold my mouth in funny shapes. I repeated sounds over and over again. We played little games where I recited little chants and rhymes.
I had a "speech impediment." I was a lisper. A lisper! How had I not known? It was significant enough that intervention was required. I don't recall anyone ever correcting my speech or making fun of me. I have an older brother... you'd have to think this would be just prime torture material. Oblivious, completely oblivious.
I had many, many sessions with the speech teacher. She was one of the loveliest teachers that I will ever know. The sessions came to include a few other students. We played games and won little rewards. Even though I enjoyed these sessions, I took them very seriously. "Thammy thnake thlid through the thlippery glath." I chanted so hard that Sammy imprited right into my brain.
I was unhappy with the knowledge that something about me was different. Being called to a doorway, out to the hallway, to a round table in a resource room, were easy symbols to interpret. This difference in me, this impediment, this defecit, would serve to physically separate me from the rest of my class. How I hated that.
I practiced every sound, I watched myself in the mirror as I forced my tongue to lay still - willing those "th's" to turn into "s's". I hissed like a cat as I played in the backyard. I read out loud to my mom each night. My early love for oral storytelling became therapeutic. I loved to pretend to be my teacher, the beautiful one with the cornflower eyes, and read little stories to my dolls and stuffed animals all lined up on my bed turned classroom.
Eventually "Thammy thnake" became "Sammy snake" and my sessions came to an end. I'm not sure how long I was in speech therapy, but I've hardly thought back on this time in my life. I am very grateful now that I received timely intervention and that my speech was not permanently altered, but I don't wan't to be reminded of my different-ness. I think about the students I have had over the years. How must they have felt about being "pulled out" of the classroom to work with the Learning Resource Teacher or the English Language Itinerant Teacher? I imagine even when we started "pulling in" it made little difference. These additional teachers signify a "need" of some kind don't they? Kids pick up on these environmental changes pretty quickly. I think now of one little boy who despite significant challenges with motor skills, refused the use of assistive technology in the classroom. He let his Alpha Smart board collect dust and chose to suffer through the laborious task of handwriting so that he would not appear to be any different from his peers. And a very big part of my 6 year old heart identified with that.

Taking Notes: Anchor Chart -What Makes a Quality Self-Study?

Elements of a Self-Study of Quality

1. Sense of Connection The researcher's eperience should be recognizable to the reader. It should promote a sense of connectedness.
2. Engagement The narrative needs to invite the reader into the researcher's experience. The reader is privy to the insight and reinterpretation of significant moments in the experience.
3. Honest and Straightforward The researcher examines their experience with a sense of conscience.
4. Purpose The researcher examines an issue related to their experience as an educator.
5. Analysis The researcher extends beyond their 'voice' to analyze what lies at the core of their story.
6. Obligation The researcher examines an issue that advances the learning not only for the self, but for the reader as well.
7. Significance The narrative aesthetically highlights a learning issue.
8. Context The researcher pays attention to character, scene, situation and action - the framework of the narrative - so that the reader may draw conclusions from an established context.
9. Perspective The powerful narrative can be told from the perspective of the tragic, ironic and comedic hero. These approaches promote realism in all its complexity. Avoid writing from the perspective of the romantic hero.

Bullough, Robert and Pinnegar, Stefinee (2001). Guidelines for Quality in Autobiographical Forms of Self-Study Research. Educational Researcher, 30 (2), 13-21.

Long Ago (1972): Kindergarten, crayons and left-handedness

"A little more time could be taken in her written work and colouring although in the past few weeks she has shown considerable improvement. With practice making the round letters properly I'm sure this will correct itself. This is very common in left-handedness."

And so the comment read on my first Kindergarten report, in that winter of 1972.
I'm surprised by my strong reactions as I look back through my report cards. I had not expected this journey to be an emotional one. I am now aware that I have indeed rewrote my story, through my eyes, throughout my life. These comments, over the years, do not describe the young Judy that I myself remember. The fairy tale of my own creation has been tarnished by the perspective of reality.

If you had asked me prior to reading this report card - and I imagine that it's the first time I've truly read my early reports with the discerning eye of adulthood - anyways, if you had asked me if I was always so neat in my work, I would have said, "absolutely." I taught primary after all. I can't dismiss this comment by suggesting it was a random event. The same comment reappears on several occasions in a variety of ways throughout elementary school.

I can live with the messy writer part to an extent, one, because the teacher had the good graces to state that there had been effort applied. (It's always a nice gesture to compliment your hanging victim.) Two, I could always fall back on that old friend, handedness.

Silly really, because I don't recall much ado about left- handedness as a young child, apart from my appalling use of standard scissors. But my teacher did not comment on my lack of manual dexterity.

The real blow to my system was that she wrote down, in ink, that I did not take enough time and care with my colouring. Nothing at that time in my life was more sacred to me than colouring. Nothing. I'm glad that my five year old self was not aware of this report.
Colouring was a huge part of my formative years. I loved to colour and I especially loved colouring books. An occasion did not go by, birthday, Easter, Christmas, that I didn't receive a colouring book. I loved crayons especially - the Crayola kind-the slim ones that came in a package with a cover, not the big, chubby ones that were often missing their paper wrappers, those odd stubs that were all thrown together in a communal basket on the table. I was very cautious of those crayons. They had snot on them. I know this for a fact because I remember the exact boy at my table who picked them up and stuck them up his nose and made gruesome faces at me with his purple and yellow plugged nostrils.

He lived up the street from me and was a buffoon even at five. He once picked up a pair of scissors that sat in a metal coffee tin, those blunted ones with the round holes that did not quite fit my left hand, well, he picked up those scissors and he proceeded to cut off his hair, snippet by snippet, coarse red hair falling on the table in front of me like the shavings spilling out of the pencil sharpener on the wall. The rest of us at the little circular table sat in silence watching this early self mutilation in a sense of shock - little mouths all resembling Spaghetti- O's.

When the damage had been done, my teacher noticed. She asked why we didn't call her over. We were still frozen in a Spaghetti-O state. I knew he was a problem child. I didn't want to be at his table because he was big, loud and scary. It bothered me that the table groupings had been arranged that way. I was a teacher pleaser from a very early age and would not complain about my seatmates. I often wondered why I had the misfortune of having to sit at the table with this big buffoon. I had no way to know that I may have been placed there as a model of good behaviour, if not good penmanship.

In my defence, I would like to state that I did apparently exhibit a drawing in the school art show as the Kindergarten representative. It was noted in my "School Days Treasures" book as an important event. Therefore, I must have a been a great "colourer," right? But wait, on further reflection, I need to disclose that my Kindergarten teacher also lived just 2 houses down from me (and about a block from the buffoon boy) and was close friends with my parents. Another blow to my fictionalized memory. It is likely that this teacher may have picked me on the basis of this friendship. Or worse, what if I was a pity pick? That's it, isn't it? I was a pity pick. I wasn't selected for my talent in art, that is, my colouring skills; I was chosen most likely on the basis of my good behaviour, my noted effort to improve, and the nepotistic duty of friendship.

One last thought occurs to me. In my Treasure book there are report cards and stories, speeches, and letters. A Mother's Day card or two. But in my Kindergarten folder my Mom has not preserved any of my colouring samples, including the piece that must have been exhibited. I have a fuzzy memory of it on display in the gymnasium mounted on dark construction paper. It was on some form of divider by the climbing apparatus. I remember being with my parents and pointing to my picture, but I don't remember the picture itself. So, now I'm left wondering about why these pictures were not saved. I have new thoughts about my childhood. My memories must now contain warts and all. I'm glad that I didn't know these things as a little girl. After all, we all hope for the fairy tale.

Yesterday: Feb. 12/10 "We are More"

I was in Toronto attending a conference Friday night. My group decided to watch the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics from the hotel lounge. There were several TV screens in the lounge and groups of people were clustered randomly around them. I recognized several people from our conference amongst the sea of strangers.
I am a proud Canadian and so you might imagine my shock when I realized that the national anthem was being played and no one, I mean no one, other than my group of friends, was standing for "O Canada." We stood out like a human centerpiece in the room. My friend tried to encourage the others to stand and she was scoffed at. I was really ashamed at that moment. Not only did the lounge full of people remain seated, beer and wine by their sides, net books open, iPhones chirping, but these people continued their conversations throughout the remainder of the anthem.
I'm not trying to suggest that everyone must hold the same beliefs, but I feel that there should be respect for the beliefs of others. So, in this public Canadian setting, during this global event in which the nations of the world come together in the spirit of competition, where Canada is the host country, where many people in this very room are sporting Canadian attire and are therefore likely themselves Canadian or are demonstrating support for Canada, just when did this behaviour become acceptable?
Disappointment aside, I chose to be positive and join in the excitement of the moment. Even if that meant I was connecting with people across the country and the world through a TV monitor. The experience was still my own to have and my own to make.
I became glued to the screen in front of me, wishing at times the volume was louder. I like to hear the commentary as the ceremony unfolds. For me, it's always about the stories. There were many glorious and powerful moments during the ceremony.
The one that spoke directly to me though, was hearing Shane Koyczan recite his slam poem,
We are More. What a powerful orator! What a beautiful message! His words stole my heart because his lyric voiced the essence of the shared Canadian experience. I am so proud that Canada chose a poet to tell his story, and mine, and maybe even yours, reader, to the world. What a privilege it was to be part of that moment.

We are More

"Define Canada

You might say the home of the Rocket

Or The Great One

Who inspired little no. 9's or 99's

But we're more than just hockey or fishing lines

Off of the rocky coast of the Maritimes

And some say what defines us

is something as simple as 'please' and 'thank you'

And as for 'you're welcome,' well, we say that, too

But we are more than genteel or civilized

We are an idea in the process of being realized

We are young, we are cultures strung together then woven into a tapestry

And the design is what makes us more than the sum totals of our history

We are an experiment going right for a change

With influences that range from A to Zed

And yes, we say 'Zed' instead of 'Zee'

We are the brightness of Chinatown and the laughter of little Italy

We dream so big that there are those

Who would call our ambition an industry

We reforest what we clear

Because we believe in generations beyond our own

Knowing now that so many of us

Have grown past what we used to be

We can stand here today

Filled with all the hope people have

When they say things like 'someday'

Because we are more

Than a laundry list of things to do and places to see

More than hills to ski

Or countryside ponds to skate

We are the abandoned hesitation of all those who can't wait

We are first-rate greasy spoon diners and healthy living cafes

A country that is all the ways you choose to live

A nation that can give you variety

Because we are choices

We are millions upon millions of voices

Shouting, keep exploring

We are more

We are the surprise the world has in store for you, it's true

Canada is the 'what' in 'what's new'

So don't let your luggage define your travels

Each life unravels differently

And experiences are what make up

The colours of our tapestry

We are the true North

Strong and free

And what's more

Is that we just didn't say it

We made it be"

(lyrics as posted by The Winnipeg Free Press)

Yesterday: Thurs. Feb. 11/10 Train to Toronto

We saw as we boarded that the train was packed with travelers. Our little suitcases needed to be stored in the last remaining available space, the refrigerator! My friend and I walked the length of the train car, laptop cases bumping the elbows of seated passengers to mark our arrival. Even on a train it becomes difficult to keep a low profile. Almost to the end now and no empty seats. It was clear we would not be sitting together having that much anticipated chat that friends who work within the same system, but in different roles, frequently need to have.
There were two seats remaining at the very end of the car. My friend took a window seat across the aisle from me. As she sat down, I lost sight of her visually, but throughout the ride, I heard snippets of her conversation with the gentleman beside her. I heard a pop tin open, such an instantly recognizable sound, and I heard her laughing. She has an infectious laugh that I like to hear. Like coffee, hearty, robust, full-bodied with a lyrical tail that most often ends with a final sigh.I'm envious that she has slipped into the "lucky" seat. Nice stranger, quick connection and spontaneous engagement.
I like to hear the laughter of others. I like to make others laugh. I think about my own laugh. I don't have a distinct memory for this. Wow, I don't recognize the sound of my own laughter. I think about this as the train lumbers now through rural terrain. The view of the snow covered fields of Southwestern Ontario is pretty. You tend to miss this when you are driving along the same route. I'm still bothered by the fact that I can't hear my own laughter. I try to conjurn up the sound but can't.
My seat was in one of those 4 packs that face each other. I sat down facing backwards, a position many people have trouble traveling in. I've spent many an ambulance ride in my former life as a nurse traveling backwards monitoring patients. The motion and sensation do not bother me. I am more uncomfortable with the notion of where do I look and what space do I own in this seating arrangement?
My seatmates all know each other. They are decades younger. They are attuned to their various netbooks and other devices, occasionally throwing out verbal "tweets" at each other - those responses of 140 characters or less. They might be surprised that I recognize their language. This language of youth, those fortunate digital natives. I'm embarrassed though. I'm sitting holding my big "mom purse," my travel bag, and my briefcase in my lap. The young man beside me points out quietly that I may wish to store these in the large space behind my seat. I do this and I pull out my e-reader. I'll try to read so they won't think I'm staring at them, and I am staring at them.
I am reading Villette, trying to concentrate on all of the French dialogue that Charlotte Bronte felt so critical to the story, and construct partial meaning of the final chapters. It is not the best choice to read on this busy train ride. I'm too distracted. I'm listening in on those snippets of my friend's conversation, I'm worried that there is something wrong with me because I don't know the sound of my own laugh and I know that I'm eavesdropping into the sound bytes of conversation occurring between my seatmates. I use my reader as a prop today.
The young lady across from me pulls out an old, yellow copy of The Princess Bride by Goldman. The cover is dog eared and one corner has been torn away. She reads for some time. She stops and says to her friend that this is her favourite book. She frequently brings it on the train for her long journey from London to Kingston. This version is not the children's version. It is the original tale. He asks her how many times she has read the book and she replies 10. I am smiling now. This is dear to my heart. He then tells her that he has also brought a book with him. I've lost the title now, but it is a humorous tale about baseball. He explains that this is his favourite re-read and he carries it with him when traveling.
In this world of immediacy it was refreshing to watch these two young people tune into reading. Somewhat ironic that I was reading a classic on a virtual reader and that these tech savvy students were reading traditional books. We came to have a talk about my e-reader. They were quite intrigued and asked me plenty of questions about its use and how I downloaded texts to the reader. They were friendly. They were polite. They expressed genuine interest in getting to know their seatmate.
Turns out we have something in common. Both attended UWO and I myself was on campus for my undergrad decades earlier. I shared a few memories about my days on campus. The days prior to the advent of the personal computer. I came to know within that hour that these two students were friends from the same city who came from opposing high schools. They were traveling home for "Reading Week." The girl was a cellist and a music major. The young man was a visual arts major.
There was another student sitting directly across from me who did not address me during the trip. He appeared glued to his netbook and was wearing thickly padded headphones. Interesting that many students had these big, black retro phones. These I remember. From time to time he would sporadically blurt out sentence fragments such as "listen to the clarity of this music" or "watch this video." I had a different impression of this young man. I admit that I judged him based on these fleeting, superficial observations. He did not hold my attention in the way that the other two students did. But as he got up to go, I noticed the book that he slipped into his knapsack.... Descartes - this young man was studying philosophy. I felt pretty ashamed of myself.
As each of the students on the train stood and gathered their flashy, silver technology, stuffed their arms into their identical navy wool (or optional grey) pea coats, I thought that I often look at youth and form a false belief about their nature. At times, I see them as either being "tuned in" or "tuned out". I wasn't looking for what I should be looking for. I saw only what I perceived them to be. Lesson learned from youth today. It made me smile. Maybe that's who I am. A smiler.

Yesterday:05/02/10 Class Begins

The room was rearranged since I'd last seen it a few months ago. My life was also altered. My father died on New Year's day, after a battle with cancer, but that is another story for a different time. Work is incredibly busy with ministry initiatives, steering committees, workshop development, and other responsibilities. My home life is similarly busy with grade 9 course selections for my daughter, the dawn of a new term that includes academic math for my son, a prominent social figure in the grade 10 scene, and the scheduling headaches of upcoming dance recitals and work related conferences. Sleep has not come easy to me these last few weeks and during the days my head is not always as clearly in the moment as it usually is. I longed for the sight of a familiar face.

The tables were set up in a square at the very back of the room. They were those new geometrically correct tables that allow for inclusive seating configurations. Today the learning community was shaped as a square, each side slightly open to allow for those with slim and nubile hips to slip with ease around the corners and into their selected chairs. My rear end did not obey these rules. It squeezed and pushed itself through the opening, making its' own path, as I spotted an open seat in the row against the back wall. The empty seat was coveted because it was beside the friendly face I recognized.

With exclamations of "excuse me," and "I'm really sorry," (after all, I am Canadian) I managed to claim my chair with only a few casualties suffered (coffees grabbed, books moved and laptops lowered).

.... The weekend wore on and I was trying to 'make meaning' from a course funny enough, about 'making meaning.' My thoughts continued to dwell on the idea that I might be able to write my story as a thesis. I kept having to pull myself back to the present and focus on the current discussion. I lost a great deal of time at one point worried with the feeling that my nose was going to run and I couldn't find a Kleenex in my purse. I was trapped in the community seating arrangement and my hip was still sore from not so gracefully claiming my seat. My energy was focused on sending telepathic thoughts to the professor to declare a break. "Please don't let me have to sniffle, please don't let me have to get up and disrupt the group."

...There was a pivotal moment during the weekend when my working theme or central focus became clear to me. One of those 'ah-hah's' that is triggered by a specific event. The professor read aloud to us. I had a sense that reading to students was an important part of her teaching experience. I was lost in the power of the written word as her voice danced across the lines of text. Her voice became the voice of my mother and each teacher, librarian or Sunday School teacher who ever read me a story.

I was jotting down the name of the Helen Humphrey's book that she was reading from, when it occurred to me. A blur of memories, flashing forwards and back, of those wonderful stories told to me and read by me, describing how my enduring relationship with literature has woven itself tightly into my life -- my early life as a reader, my undergrad life studying literature, my life as a young mother reading to her children, my life as a teacher bringing stories to my students, my life as a literacy coach and teacher consultant working alongside teachers to engage students in reading and thinking, and my continued love for reading as an adult. My own passion for telling stories, more recently in the form of blog postings, could provide the format for my annals - and organize the chronicle that I will (eventually) complete.

On another note, the telepathic begging worked. I did get a break and was able to blow my nose, check my teeth and swipe the eyeliner back under my eyelids where it belonged. I returned and remained a keen participant.

Present Day: Setting the Stage for Narrative Inquiry

I started a new Master of Ed. course this weekend, Narrative Inquiry in Teaching, Learning, and Research. I'm still getting my head around the terminology associated with this form of qualitative research, and would like to explore if this is the methodology that would best fit my exit from the MEd. (I heard "stories" and got pretty excited. I heard that I could express myself using any format to share my "stories" -- and thought about my love for blogging. I heard that it is possible to conduct a thesis using the self as both researcher and participant. Very intriguing.)

Here is my rudimentary understanding (any errors or misinterpretations are entirely my own):

The narrative is about personal life experiences remembered and shared in the form of stories. These stories allow for the recovery of meaning and the reconstruction of meaning as we cross time. So, the concepts of memory and time are very significant. This quote says it much better than I can:

"The past shapes the future through the medium of a situation, and the future shapes the past through the stories we tell to account for and explain our situation. Where we have been and where we are going interact to make meaning of the situations in which we find ourselves."
Connelly & Clandinin, 1988

I learned that the field of Narrative Inquiry in education has been influenced by the work of John Dewey (1859-1952) and his student Joseph Schwab (1909-1988).

Dewey viewed education as the study of experience, and to study experience, one must study life.

"...the principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after."
John Dewey, 1938



So, over the course of the next few weeks I will be composing annals and chronicles of my life experience in order to give a basic shape to my personal and social history. Annals and chronicles are considered "Field Text" .

A chronicle is concerned with the recovery of meaning. Our stories can only be told from our present understandings of what we remember. A chronicle organizes our life experiences in order of their occurrence across time. The chronicle that I complete for this course is to focus on a period of time or a central life theme. I am encouraged to include any evidence to support my chronicle. Evidence can be defined as any object such as a photograph or a letter, that helps to explain or support that the story actually exists/existed. (As someone who loves to tell a story, reads in every spare moment, loves to scrapbook the important moments in her life, is an amateur photographer -- I feel empowered. I know this word. I have history with this form of field text. I have chronicled, just didn't know it in this sense.)

Early Working Idea for Chronicle: I'm considering chronicling a central theme in my life, reading. I'd like to explore my experience with reading, my love for the (fictional) narrative, my belief that the experiences associated with the fictional narrative are just as influential to my life as my lived narrative. Further, I'd like to explore my experience with reading in an educational context and the impact again on my present life and how it has shaped my life as an educator. I'm thinking that this blog can warehouse my chronicle as it forms as well as the annals and autobiography that I will write.

Annal: Annals are items of significance (the recording of an experience, event or situation) found within a chronicle. Where the chronicle is concerned with the recovery of meaning, the annal is concerned with the reconstruction of meaning. This is the assignment of present day meaning to past experience. My annals will take a written form and be posted to this blog. The topics have been somewhat structured by my professor to assist in our practice of composing field text. The first annal that I will be writing needs to convey an experience, situation or event from my childhood.

Early Working Idea for Chronicle: Read Aloud in early elementary school

Autobiography: In this context, a personal or professional autobiography that uses the language of a narrative inquirer. It is a specific story that recovers and reconstructs meaning from a theme or significant event or situation in one's life that emerges from the chronicle or the annals of the chronicle.

I really have no idea right now what direction my autobiography may take. Meaning will have to be recovered and reconstructed from my chronicle and the annals within it, to lead me to a present day understanding of "my truths" from the theme and significant life experiences that I chose to explore.

I hope that I have set the stage adequately for my personal journey into Narrative Inquiry. I feel that it's time for my storytelling to begin.