A Hero’s Journey for the 21st Century
Betty Ray is Edutopia's senior blog editor and community manager. She was one of the organizers for TEDxSFED in San Francisco and is a regular blogger for Edutopia. Follow her on Twitter @EdutopiaBetty.
Once upon a time . . .
There were very special people. These were the bards, sorcerers, and magicians who conjured webs of intrigue and excitement; treachery and death; rebirth and forgiveness. These people were our writers, filmmakers, musicians and folklorists, and they were the keepers of our social and psychological well-being. Their words created our cultural narrative, guided us through adversity, and illuminated the darkest caverns of our collective subconscious. They helped us navigate to happily ever after.
Then . . .
Along came the internet. In the mid-nineties -- the dawn of the internet -- blogging software made it easy for anyone to publish their stories to a global audience. Then in late 1999, internet audio enabled anyone with a computer to create an entire radio network and reach far more listeners than even the largest, single, traditional AM/FM station. Today, we live in a world where the average first world teenager has more video production capacity in her pocket than all three TV networks circa 1955, combined.
So our stories – our cultural mythologies – which were once the domain of a handful of beknighted, priestly, or just plain lucky people, are now in the hands of the masses.
This democratization of storytelling is engaging our kids at new levels. But it also means that everyone is a storyteller. And when everyone is a storyteller, our cultural narrative begins to shift from a sweeping epic hero’s journey to “here’s me @ the zoo.”
Now, when it comes to a cultural narrative, the sheer volume of “me at the zoo” videos is enough to make a literate person either cringe or initiate preparations for the impending apocalypse. These stories are often narcissistic, badly shot, cruel, and/or just plain dumb. Indeed, for every 1,000 Greatest Proposal Ever!!! videos there are 300,000 #epic fails. If this is our cultural narrative, we’re clearly doomed.
But before you flee to rural Montana and stockpile canned goods, consider the notion that there's another way of looking at this: Maybe our cultural narrative is shifting, and these videos are the baby steps?
Indeed, the heroes of the 21st century will need different skills and abilities than those of yore. They need a narrative that helps them orient in the increasingly complex world in which they live. They need flexibility to deal with ever-changing social and technological landscapes. They need listening and negotiation skills to be able to work with others whose opinions and needs may differ. They need to reframe the terms of the battle from “us vs. them” to “where do we share a common goal, and how can we collaborate to create something bigger than each of us?”
As educators, we have an opportunity to help our students develop appropriate 21st century narratives to take with them on their journey.
The Student as Protagonist
I am not advocating that we give up Homer or Star Wars. Indeed, it is critical that students are exposed to meaningful heroics and story so they know what they look like. But we can build upon these great works of literature by giving students an opportunity to design their own stories and place themselves squarely in the role of protagonist.
Especially given the complex challenges our students face today, it behooves all of us for kids to take a more active role in shaping their own stories. When students are their own protagonists, they get first-hand experience reflecting on their choices, identifying and overcoming their own obstacles, and knowing their own strengths and limitations. They get first-hand experience being a hero.
The Changing Role of Community
Back in the olden days, there was a clear distinction between storyteller and audience. Now that we have literally hundreds of new social story platforms, we are co-creating stories with others all the time. As such, our new heroes are no longer lone warriors. Instead, they can witness each others’ epic wins and fails, and offer support to one another from worlds away when the going gets tough.
Of course, the social storyweb creates all kinds of new quests for our young heroes. We have new issues of identity and digital citizenship. (What is "real"? How do I know who I can trust?) And as our ability to self-express becomes limitless, our privacy is increasingly negotiable. (Is it convenient or creepy that Google and Facebook know more about me than my husband does?) And, finally, what can we do together to make the world a better place?
Our young heroes of today need new experiences, myths and tools to help them be successful in the new realities of the 21st century, and these myths are being written and re-written as we speak. I would love to hear how others are working with kids to help them build their own narratives, either in groups or as individuals. Please share your favorite resources and ideas in the comments area below.
Kids need to know the basics of story creation -- character, conflicts, resolutions etc. -- before they can write their own. Have them read, watch, and play video games with a critical eye towards identifying these basic story elements. Then you can use life timelines as way of uncovering their personal narratives. Have them identify heroes of their own from real life or fiction as inspiration. You can go as deep as you have time for here! There are myriad tools available for actual story creation (see Resources below).
For younger kids, have them create their own super hero and dream up their own adventure. Media has given us a bunch of great superheroes already, but it’s a fun challenge to have them come up with fresh ones. Have them team up and collaborate on making books or writing songs about their heroes and perform them for each other.
Questions for Reflection
- What is your ordinary world?
- What are your challenges?
- What strengths (or superhero powers) are you using to overcome these challenges?
- Who are your helpers?
- Whom are you helping?
- How do you and others benefit from your actions?
- Who am you online vs in person?
- Are you “real” online? Are others?
- How can we use our community online and off to prevent cyberbullying?
- What else can we create together?
Resources
- National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writer’s Program
- Cowbird Beautiful short story-telling site
- Seven Collaborative Storytelling Websites to Weave Your Own Digital Stories
- Script Frenzy Support for writing 100 pages in 30 days to finish your script.
- StoryBird Short, art-inspired story-making site.
- Storify Create stories using social media.
- Figment Writing community
(Thanks to Todd Finley and Gaetan Pappalardo for assistance on this blog.)
Comments (10)
Comment RSSSign in or register to post comments
Neat, but you still need a
Neat, but you still need a teacher to guide the students or they can go off willy nilly into hyperspace without edits.
The allure of digital media
The allure of digital media constantly available to our youth has become a modern-day version of the legendary Pied Piper. Without a proper lens of discretion the spectrum of Internet content can become mind numbing. Teachers, using computers within the k-12 classroom environment, know a percentage of their students will improperly use them for viewing negative content.
After seeing these distractions in digital media classrooms, I put together a series of photo/video essays using original content for inspiring students to create their own narrative stories. As a form of 'blended learning,' these essays involve: current events, science, history and travel. Leading by example, has proven over time a most successful teaching method. Please see my web-based, E-Learning site at: www.bigpictureone.wordpress.com
Once upon a time, when I was in school, the teachers who most inspired me were the best storytellers.
Unfortunately ...
While capability and access have increased, overall form and content quality has not kept pace. Having taught video and film production at the university level for 10 years, I see lots of stuff on youtube that exhibits poor production fundamentals, especially with camera work and audio recording/mixing. The content will not be effective if the form is lacking.
Hero's Journey Online Toolkit for Our Students
Thanks, Betty, for your very down-to-earth and personal testimony of your "Hero's Journey."
As longtime English and technology educators and founders of an online Digital Media Learning Center and Mobile Studio Toolkit (http://www.YouScreenWriter.com), we watched how our son discovered his "Hero's Journey" to be spiritual and magical, after Jim Pasternak from LA Film School shared the eternal gift of Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces".
We would like to extend your live in-person student writer's workshop paradigm, by adding an online classroom and collaborative digital storytelling workflow toolkit, which walks the teacher and students through Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, from story idea to screen, in the same George Lucas did with the Star Wars series.
Thank you for inspiring our teachers and students to apply your "Writer's Workshop" approach to help the next Millenial Generation of digital storytellers.
Would you please be so kind as to try out http://www.YouScreenWriter.com toolkit as our gift to the Edutopia community?
Great Hero Quotes!
Thanks, Betty, for this inspiring piece. I hope it's OK to quote you widely, starting with "Indeed, the heroes of the 21st century will need different skills and abilities than those of yore..."
I think it's really important that students have opportunities to compare heroes and heroic deeds of the past to today's challenges, as you have done with, for instance, with your reference to "cyberbullying." Having multiple hero's journey models to draw from will help today's youth step up to "be the change" in their real-life communities.
Thank you for your post. I’m
Thank you for your post. I’m working and playing with college students in a course called Good Stories: Teaching Narratives for Peace & Justice. We use Brian Boyd’s Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, & Fiction to ground our own narratives in our emergent capacity as humans to choose to cooperate. I do believe it is a hero’s journey to construct ourselves in playful and serious narratives that imagine ways of living together in better ways. That's what we do in the course. We draw upon archetypal models in oral tales & in written narratives (especially with Idries Shah’s World Tales), and build from these and our own hearts in making digital media productions. To support this I also curate a space on Scoop It that sources the resources coming out every day and just added your item (http://www.scoop.it/t/goodstories246/ ). I also occasionally add items related to this work in my blog (e.g., http://dochorsetales.blogspot.com/2011/01/making-good-stories.html ). Storytelling is not automatically good or effective; it needs careful nurturing. Thanks again for your support.
Entrepreneur
Great post Betty – I am the founder of a new startup company addressing several issues you have so passionately identified. I can share with you that our focus is safe interaction for students sharing media. By creating relevant tools for collaboration and knowledge sharing, the focus elevates from one of individual expression to safe community involvement. Enabling students to join in the storytelling process, provide a more germane media perspective, and define themselves in new powerful ways ‘in the new realities of the 21st Century’. I look forward to sharing our progress with you and Edutopia in the near future.
Yes - thanks for asking! I
Yes - thanks for asking! I published a book on this topic (in fact, on narratives, imagination and education... long time ago) and couple of articles. I also had the chance to work in the past with the Imaginative Education Research Group and with the Center for Narrative Studies storywise.com. Starting from this experience I see how important is the discussion you open here and how your post is bringing substance in a discourse dominated by fads and simplistic statements.
Thanks
Appreciate the feedback Stefan. Are you doing work in this area?
Great post
Thanks - this is the best blog I've read recently... and a step ahead from the dull and empty enthusiasm about "disruptive innovation (reduced to ICT)" is saving us and our schools/universities.