After a break like the one our students have just enjoyed, something like the following exchange will often take place. “How was vacation?” I will ask. “Great,” will hopefully come the answer, on which I will build with a lighthearted plea for detail: “How about a story? Just one story, [name], about something interesting that happened while you were away from our beloved school!” And more often than not, when our student has a moment, he or she will plunge enthusiastically into the tale of a visiting relative or an unexpected discovery about New York or a imaginative afternoon spent reinventing the world with friends.
“Well, there was this time when…,” our student might begin. What enchanting words to hear, as one of our young story-tellers recounts a paragraph or even a page from his or her life, with an articulateness, an attention to detail, a wit and many other qualities that captivate and regale. To engage LFNY students in the construction of narrative, whether in this spontaneous way or through a deliberate approach in our classrooms, strikes me as important for several reasons.
Storytelling may well be that trait which most distinguishes humankind from other species. Yet as many observers of our nascent 21st century would argue, perhaps the most highly regarded among whom is Dan Pink, whose book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the World became an international classic the moment it was published in 2005, there has never before been an era quite like ours, in which the skills of narration are so absolutely critical for us to master. For starters, Pink would affirm, the ability to make sense of our lives and the world around us in an age of unprecedented change and complexity is necessary to our feeling of purpose and harmony with life.
Furthermore, learning the craft of storytelling hones our creativity in ways that nothing else can, in the same way that understanding the stuff of narration from the inside provides us with critical thinking skills that have never been as crucial as they are in the media-saturated age of today. Authentic, incisive, compelling storytelling is also becoming a competency that colleges and universities prize; few would dispute the likelihood that a decade from now, if not much sooner, renowned institutions of higher education will be asking applicants to present digital portfolios telling the story of their academic and co-curricular achievements. There is the socioeconomic too. Given the tertiarisation and computerization which have been the driving forces of the global economy for several decades, demonstrating an aptitude for sophisticated narration is a prerequisite for success in the workplace of tomorrow.
How can our students learn to be brilliant storytellers, for their own benefit and the sake of us all, is thus a question worth posing, as we have long done at the LFNY.* By effective storytelling, we also mean being adept at employing not just pen, paper and podium as humankind has done for centuries, but harnessing the digital technologies of our epoch to advance the narratives our students wish and will one day need to weave, digital technologies that are revolutionizing the craft of storytelling and providing possibilities for expression that were previously inconceivable.
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Consider virtual reality, otherwise known as VR, which figured prominently at the mesmerizing Future of Storytelling Festival [2] organized in New York City during the first week of the October vacation and which some of the youngest among us attended, experiencing what it is like to fly like a bird over a landscape of their choosing or to be the chief engineer on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, but also to bear witness to an incident of racist discrimination or to participate in a movement for national self-determination 100 years ago. Are these the kinds of stories we will learn to create in the new media lab, one of our student participants asked. Yes, came my answer. And what an adventure it will be!
*Please do come to our York Wing Community Day on November 12 for an opportunity to tell your own story at the LFNY Voices Booth!
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.