Example reflection - Storytelling

Challenge:

I am an Italian university student who is in Germany for an

exchange program. I have got the opportunity to be an ambassador

of my country and hold a few hours of Italian culture in an

elementary school, in order to raise awareness of Europe and

introduce the young students to a different state. I am very

nervous: I studied the language for years, but German is very

difficult and I don't speak it perfectly. How will I be able to

keep the children's attention high? Will I be able to offer them

an idea of Italy and make them curious?

I have a week to achieve my goal.

Selection:

The selected tool I choose for this challenge is “storytelling”.

As we understood from the last video of the second week, titled

“Storytelling tool”, the first important thing to do is to know

the audience. I am not speaking with other university students or

teachers, but with children. They come from another country, so

they have a very different environment which is not connect to

mine. They have no idea about things I’m familiar with.

Application:

My first step was to divide the topics into themes: day 1: food.

Day 2: family. Day 3: school. Day 4: sports. Day 5: books.

Monday morning everything was ready: I started my lesson talking

and showing photos and movies too, but I could understand that the

kids were losing attention. I was talking to them as if they only

had to learn new notions by heart. After half an hour I decided to

change everything and take as an example the day of an ordinary

child, called Giannino (it is the name of a famous Italian

children's book) who was the same age as them, and follow his day

from morning to evening. I told his story with imagination. In

this way I was able to touch all the important themes: what he

eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, what he learns at school,

what books he reads and what sport he practices in his free time,

what music he listens to. From a cross-section of everyday life in

which the children could recognize and amuse themselves by finding

differences, they learned by discovering from a particular example

the common habits of Italians.

Insight:

What I have learned from conducting this exercise with a group of

children is that while the informations - where Italy is, what is

the  language and the habits - are important for reinforcing their

understanding of the country  they want to know, the more valuable

aspect of the activity is the shared insights and shared learning

that occurs while they are comparing these informations finding

the differences with their. This is the better way to remember.

The teacher gives the group of students a focal point for

discussion, a specific theme from the day of a normal boy, that

allows them to share their perspectives and develop insights into

potential differences and things in common from the day life of an

Italian and a German boy. For example, they find really

interesting to know that what they call "Schnitzler" (cutlet) also

exist in Italy, but with a different name: cotoletta alla

milanese. Still, what they call Cologne Dom exist in Italy too,

just with the name Milan Dom.

Approach:

An useful alternative approach could have been applying a

different tool, the one of Visualization, or Visual Thinking.

Indeed, showing photos to the students could also be really useful

in order to compare two different things and understand

immediately: knowing through images. Since I discovered that the

most valuable aspect is the shared insights and learning, next

time I would use the visualization activity as a starting point

for a series of design thinking activities.

