"Stories Are Important!" Navigating Narratives, Reclaiming Stories, and Humanizing Writing Through a Story Studio

• In Event: Multimodal Narratives for Liberation: Toward Embodied Literacies

Abstract

This exploratory case study investigated how 14 third-grade diverse children revealed their practices, beliefs, and identities surrounding stories, language, and literacies throughout a 10-week afterschool storying project in which they explored diverse picturebooks and composed numerous personal stories, drawing on their rich linguistic resources and utilizing a variety of verbal and visual modes. A multidimensional approach grounded in humanizing and culturally sustaining pedagogies, critical literacies, and socioecological theories provided detailed insights into the multiplexity and fluidity of children’s storying, languaging, and literacy practices and positionings, with findings indicating they were constantly negotiating (a) whose stories mattered, (b) whose languaging mattered, and (c) whose literacies mattered. Ultimately, all negotiations materialized as one common underlying theme: negotiating who mattered.

Author

• Sharon Lynn Smith, University of Miami