I continue to find so much in what Kendall Haven has written in his book, Story Proof: the science behind the startling power of story. This is so important to what we do because we invite our students to enter into story every day. If we don’t even know what we are getting in to, how can we effectively lead or facilitate others? We must deepen our understanding of what story is so that we can know what we are getting into when we invite our students to enter in. What Kendall Haven says will help us understand story a little more and take us to a new level. He states:
“Stories uniquely contain and present both our beliefs and our knowledge about the world…the similarity of store and story is not a coincidence…stories our universal storehouse of knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes, passions, dreams, imagination, and vision…we live in stories like fish live in water –breathing them in and out…taking from them or sustenance, but rarely conscious of the element in which we live.”
This says it all right here. I would add that if we are rarely conscious of the stories that are happening, then maybe story is the missing key to acquisition. I also find myself asking the question of how can we create more story in class and tap into the storehouse of our students? Maybe when we open the doors we will encounter a new level acquisition that inspires people. What a cool job we have!
tprs thoughts has moved to languagethoughts.wordpress.com 
I have been working on getting the “story” into everything lately, and I’ve been pleased with our results. For one thing, I have copied someone in our group who coaches the kids that things don’t have to be true or normal. For another, I am actively recruiting pictures. Whenever a kid sends me a picture, we use it to tell a story. They like to have their pictures up on the projector. One of my kids was working in a state fair food booth, so we told a story about her and the cook there. (I took a picture of what looked like her hitting him with a pan.) Then we had a video today from another kid, and we told the story behind the video. A third student sent me a picture of herself at the fair with a pig, and we told a story about that too. It’s turning out that there are a lot of rides around here! The pig goes on rides, the kids go on rides (and the rides have been breaking down, really truly), the kids are riding four-wheelers, and so on.
I know the kids think that they can get away with a lot if they just send me their pictures, because then we’ll tell stories about the pictures and not do anything else during class.