Friday, June 10, 2011

Where I Have Been for the past 4 months

The Queen of Hyperbole is a title I wear easily. It fits. So when I say this has been the most intense and exhausting few months of my life, most people will "pooh-pooh" me. But it has. And I guess I have done things like this before? But it is impossible to remember. Which is likely why I do things like this over and over again. What is "this"? "This" is/was an epic project that  cost me many more gray hairs, a dozen visits to  PT for back problems and 6 to 7, 18 hour days a week.

This spring, from March 11th until April 15th, massmouth storyteller-educators taught the art of storytelling to high school students. The curriculum based, in class program was called, StoriesLive® Collectively, we have heard over 1,200 personal stories from high school juniors and seniors in Abington, Andover, Boston Latin Academy, Everett, Lynn Classical, and Newburyport high schools. The best of the stories heard in the classroom moved on to tell in front of a larger high school audience. The best of each high school competed on April 30th, 2011 for a share $5000 in scholarship cash. Prizes were awarded for any post-secondary educational endeavor as follows: $2,000 for the 1st place and $1000 each to 2 runners up. $500 to the Audience Choice winner. A $500 award was a discretionary prize from massmouth to any student in the program.





So here, at last, is a video - uneven in quality but unified in message, that has some of the highlights of StoriesLive®.