Storytelling II: This American Life highlights Lucia Lopez

As discussed yesterday, we have seen over and over again how programming that allows youth to tell their own stories, particularly in a collaborative manner, is transformative. Stories give youth a way to express where they want to be, what they've been through, what's been helpful, and how far they've come.

To hear a startlingly well-told, real-life example of the transformational power of autobiographical storytelling, listen to Act II of this episode of the radio show This American Life.

In her own words, it details the story of Lucia Lopez, a young woman involved in gangs in Chicago. Your heart breaks, listening to her tell frankly about her childhood, "Since I was a little girl growing up, I never had an okay day."

By a fluke, she falls into a youth theatre program and lands an opportunity to tell her life story on stage as part of a play. Through storytelling, Lucia changes herself from someone enmeshed in a world of violence to someone in control of her own life.

She says "I would tell people, 'What are you looking at? Do you have a problem? Don't be lookin' at me like that because, you know, something could kick off...'" She feels like she needs to beat up anyone who looks at her. Later, on stage, she realizes that hundreds of people are looking at her... and they're supposed to. Describing this transformation, she giggles and says, "I'll be like, wow. I guess I gotta get used to it. I can't be attacking everyone who's looking at me during the play!"

This episode was recorded a few years ago, but the message is timely.

I have to applaud Ira Glass for his frank statements about the importance of afterschool programs in this episode. He references a study Shirley Brice Heath conducted over ten years, studying 120 afterschool programs. She stumbled upon a finding that surprised even her; Ira Glass describes,

"Arts programs were more effective at changing kids lives than any other kind of program for kids. More than sports and academic programs, more than community service programs. The art kids not tended to come from worse backgrounds than kids in the other programs... but after being in these programs, they became kids who were more likely to read for pleasure, they were more likely to be in honors societies, get academic honors, they were more entrepreneurial, they started projects, they were more willing to teach other kids.

"Shirley Brice Heath said that's because the arts programs tended to involve kids in more collaborations with each other. They were just doing harder stuff. And critiquing it, and making big plans, and contingency plans, and reevaluating plans, and they learned all these verbal skills.

"Her study also showed that although those programs are the most effective at helping the kids who are the most at-risk in our society, they have a terrible time staying afloat. Nine out of ten of them can't find funding sources and die within eight years."

It is still hard to advocate for funding for arts programs, arguably even harder than when this program was recorded. And yet anyone who has led or participated in such programs can attest to their power.

Lucia herself agrees that the fact that she was in an arts program specifically was essential to her transformation. She describes doing this play as a tool she used to look at everything that had happened in her life, let it go.

At the end of this episode segment, Lucia performs a short narrative scene from her own play. Don't miss it.

Storytelling: an effective resiliency tool for at-risk youth?

A recent study released last month in the journal Child and Youth Care Forum examined the role participatory storytelling can play in programming for at-risk youth. Specifically, they looked at two things: how storytelling can help program planners evaluate what parts of their programs work best, and how it can help youth in the programs build resiliency and change their lives for the better.

The researchers added a storytelling project into a diverse spread of summer programs, and selected an average pool of participants from each program to join the storytelling component. Through assorted creative means, participants were encouraged to tell their own stories and the stories of made-up characters participating in the same experiences they were undergoing in their own programs. Youth engaging in storytelling reported dramatic changes in their levels of risky behavior and striking increases in their sense of optimism about the future. Notably, some of the risk behaviors reduced through storytelling were not shown to be reduced effectively by other methods, such as telling youth that certain behaviors are risky.

I'm not surprised. You probably aren't either if you've ever directed autobiographical storytelling with kids, or led quality reflection activities after a service-learning project, or heard campers at a summer-closing campfire tearfully tell the stories of their best memory at camp.

The reason is that narrating one's own experiences of growth and transformation solidifies those experiences. People learn from reflecting on experiences just as much as they learn from the experiences themselves. Reflection, narration and storytelling tie the pieces together, and solidify them through articulation. The creative action of telling one's own story, or someone else's, has been shown to be empowering and transformative, time and time again.

My only concern reading this study would be whether youth might tell stories of their own positive transformations or goals for the future because they sense that's what the adults want to hear. I don't think that's the case in this study, given that some of the statements were strongly personal in nature, but it would be worth further research. Kids and youth, whether in a classroom or program, are intuitive when it comes to questions we ask; they know there's an answer we want to hear, but they also get comfortable over time, and are frank about what they feel.

And it's that frankness that's essential to and empowering about storytelling. Telling youth to behave differently, or telling them who they are isn't especially useful or empowering, but creating a space for youth to tell their own stories enables them to tell us what works, and to make it happen with our support.

Thanks to pupski for the Creative Commons photo.