abstract

This paper investigates how community and cultural narratives provide the context for the trajectory of an individual. Such narratives often shape the direction an individual takes in life. What are the stories we embody and how do they help to define us?

This project seeks to examine the effects stories, mentors and culture can have on young people. The focus is on the meaning-making process between the oral traditions of storytelling and the resultant process of learning how to learn. This paper employs narrative inquiry, historical record and perceptive fiction (creative chronicling) as a research methodology. The objective is to set-up an exploration via contemporary concepts such as phenomenology and epigenetic theory to better understand the forces and experiences that shape the individual.

It will explore the transitional spaces encountered when an individual begins to understand oneself as truly unique and independent from the cultural context that gave birth to their identity. It will examine the responsibility that is assumed when one departs from their inherited cultural traditions to begin to explore the world for oneself. This paper is a tool by which the author engages in the act of living one’s own story as a means of defining the process of identity creation, also understood as our living history. To be an active agent of our living history one must accept the responsibilities of, and participate in, the act of being alive. This individual effort is at the heart of what it means to be an effective classroom teacher.

We become our own teachers, when we tell our own stories. By exploring the tradition of storytelling as a method of personal education this paper explores ways to connect with narratives that transcend their specific generational context. This paper seeks to provide anecdotal guidance in the ever-changing and complex cultural environs that shape one's being. It pursues the art of the story as a gift to define one’s purpose in life.