We are Fund for Teachers Fellows!

On March 29, we received the exciting news that our proposal to travel to Scotland and bring back storytelling traditions to our school and community was accepted. We are so grateful, exhilarated, and eager to begin this journey of transformation for our teaching practices and community experience.

This is our space for sharing the journey. So, let us begin with a brief introduction of who we are, how we got here, and where we are going first!

Who are we?

Lori Alexander is a third grade teacher at Walnut Grove School in New Market, Alabama. She has been teaching for 17 years with experience in many grade levels and gifted education. Some of her professional accomplishments include Google certified educator, teacher of the year in 2015, and serving on the school's leadership team. Lori enjoys reading, traveling, and learning new things.

Holly Whitt is the school librarian at Walnut Grove School in New Market, Alabama. She started her career as a research librarian and has been a school librarian for 11 years. She teaches weekly library and makerspace classes, teaches a daily podcasting class, and coaches an after school robotics team. She believes curiosity is at the heart of all learning and empathetic relationships that help students become change makers in their communities. Her career accomplishments include Fund for Teachers Fellowship, PBS Lead Digital Innovator, and SLJ Build Something Bold Award winner. Holly enjoys reading, traveling, and hiking with her dog, Hank.

Where we Started

Lori and I have explored many programs and ideas to build readers and writers at our school. From challenge based programs like AR and Battle of the Books to mentoring and modeling with book clubs, book logs, and book themed reading events. Nothing really ignited a love of reading in our students.

Last year, we took a reading journey together participating in the Decades Reading Book Challenge from the Book Girls Guide. Not only did this year of reading create a stronger literary bond between us, we both saw communities of readers connecting around a theme of telling their stories related to the books. What if we could build that kind of community among our students about their reading?

We started asking, what is important to them? How do they tell their stories? It's easy for them to talk about the things they love and share stories about what is happening in their lives, but translating that into academic reading and writing can be challenging. Like all of us, our students need more background knowledge and experiences to make reading and writing connections to their own lives. That's when we decided to build our readers and writers through experience based storytelling that comes directly from what they can access in their community.

Our questions then became, how do we model this for them and what are the storytelling traditions that got us hooked? We had many answers, but one we had in common was local history in the form of myths, legends, folklore and other place-based storytelling.

Where we are going...

When we think of great storytellers, Scotland is high on the list. After doing a bit of research into their storytelling traditions, we discovered that 2022 is Scotland's National Year of Stories. Wouldn't it be grand to visit this rich culture of storytelling in the year that it was being highlighted throughout the country? Of course! So, we researched all the things we wanted to learn to bring back to our students and wrote a proposal to Fund for Teachers. We are humbled and grateful to have been selected to pursue our plan and can't wait to share the entire journey here.

While we aren't leaving until the first week of June, we will be doing more research leading up to the trip and sharing it all here. Stay tuned, help us prepare, and travel to Scotland with us for a week of planning for our very own Year of Stories in our community next school year.