Telling Gould Project Tells Stories of Gould Staff

May 12, 2016

Telling Gould: Sophomore Storytelling Project

Why do people share stories?  

What makes a story enduring, universal, and possibly timeless?

How has storytelling changed over time?

 
     Recently Gould 10th graders presented their “Telling Gould” stories to the whole school at assembly.  According to 10th grade Gould English teacher Jay Riley, “Our students discovered that many of the struggles and triumphs and themes of what people think and write about have changed little over millennia. The reason ‘to thine own self be true’ still rolls off the tongue 500 years later is not because of its excellent diction and construction, but because the thoughts and stories it evokes make such sense to us.  Our assignment required students to uncover those stories that help define previously unknown community members, and simultaneously it teaches that these people are living the same enduring and timeless stories as the rest of us, and as the characters we meet in our reading.  Learning these lessons outside of a book, and outside of a classroom, adds new relevance for a student.”

Gould 10th grade English teacher Ben Stonebreaker added  that to help Gould’s sophomores better understand the art of storytelling, they were asked to pull a story from within the Gould community. The students interviewed a member of Gould’s staff to gather a stories that the students wrote up and shared with the class. A physical component of the project entailed reducing a story to its essential six words. These words were then laser-cut into a mat board “brick” that become part of a larger instillation. The Telling Gould Project instillation captures thirty-five different stories from the Gould community and is located just outside the IDEAS Center in Hanscom’s eastern stairwell.  Come check it out!

Telling Gould Instillation

Telling Gould Bricks

Brad Clarke
Dr. Clarke is the Associate Dean of Academics and History Department Chair at Gould. He loves his family, trail running, playing baseball, and his epic collection of vinyl records.

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