Storyman

I, for one, have always loved stories. Ever since I was a kid, I absolutely loved a good story, and I was blessed to have had parents that loved to read to me. From elementary school to junior high, my nose was always in a comic or storybook. As I got older, my love for a good story moved from books to movies and video games. To this day, a good story that I have not read in years will still be fresh in the back of my mind.

So here I am, ranting about loving stories in this educational blog. What's the point? Recent studies by educational research show that information taught to people in story form, tends to stick best with us! It honestly makes so much sense!

When I read this information in the handful of articles we were given to read in class, I had flashbacks to my time as a college student. For those that do not know, I am an alumni of Monmouth College with a B.A. in Biology. Truthfully, I did not like it very much. It was like nothing ever stuck for me! I always loved topics like Anthropology, Humanities, History and Philosophy. Most of all, I absolutely love sports. What do all of these topics have an common with each other? All are usually taught in story form! Anthropology is the "study of man" and History is the "story of man". Biology, on the other hand, was a lot more monotonous. Some of the topics that I learn had story-like properties towards them, but most of it was just memorizing facts that I just cared nothing about. 

As I come full circle, in my journey to become a science teacher I realize this: stories make for better information retention. One of my goals has been to bring science alive for my future students. In previous writings, I've talked about kids not caring about science because they don't see its application to the real world. The nice thing about having a liberal arts background is being able to connect everything, regardless of background and discipline and I cannot wait to bring that to my future classroom.

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