A different kind of a day

On Tuesday I had a different kind of a day. Instead of being at school, I was at an international conference "Quality Education for Children at Social Risk. Sharing best practices and starting a dialogue."  Ms. Sirje and I had been invited to give a workshop at this conference. Hesitant at first (we had given workshops to teachers and parents, but here the audience was unclear; we had given workshops in English, but it's not our mother tongue) we still said yes. Reading and supporting readers matters to us. We titled our workshop "Supporting Literacy Development of Children" and included five topics: importance of reading, role of adults, reading nest, read aloud and supporting readers.

Today we felt well prepared: we knew our message; had a slide show with pictures and no more than six words on each slide; had practiced our text several times; had a balance of suggestions, facts and stories; and had brought two suitcases of books. At first we were worried that the participants might not be our target audience and the may feel bored. Then we worried that because of many parallel sessions no one would come. The latter came almost true. Never in my life have I been at a workshop with only five people in the audience. Nevertheless, it was a positive learning experience. Letting our passion show and keeping expectations high for ourselves we engaged the five people in a dialogue with us, and we know that we would be ready for a bigger audience too.

Besides our workshop we got to listen to different people.  I enjoyed a session by Estonian storyteller Piret Päär. The storyteller was a small-sized woman, barely reaching the microphone at the podium, yet her words filled every corner of the conference hall, reached every heart, and carried the listeners to different places and times, stirred emotions, and changed us all in some way. 

Finishing the day with listening to the storyteller made me almost cry. She weaved together the stories she grew up with, her personal stories, her storytelling experiences and stories of other people. She shared how stories had shaped her, how stories had touched tough audiences in the most unexpected ways, how in a trusting community people had really understood their own stories.

Here are some ideas for food of thought:
We have to tell our stories to understand how beautiful they are.
Our stories are beautiful.

and

It's our job to tell the stories not to wait for the kids to ask. They don't know that they need to ask.
Children need to hear stories. Many stories.