Challenge & Selection   I work as a student counselor with young people. They are in the stage of discovering themselves,  school problems, with friends, some escalate to levels of anxiety, bullying. I have wanted, and  I’ve already done several sessions with some students, but not all of them attend, and if they do,  they remain silent or evade and change the topics that may bother them. The challenge is to  make these young people who are going through a difficult stage in life open up to a person they  do not trust. When I am working with young minds, I like for them to get to know me first so I  can build trust between us.    That is why the tool I have chosen is storytelling, it is a tool that will help me connect with the  students. By telling stories from my youth, embarrassments that I passed, problems that I  overcame, I hope that they will feel that it is not a trivial session and should not feel ashamed or  discomfort by telling me their stories. That they count on me to let off steam and that they see  in me someone who will support them and believe. I use their anecdotes to get better feedback  to improve my understanding of their interests and thoughts. David Perez said during the  lecture "The story connects to emotions, the characters, the values of the people. Is about the  connection that we give to people about a piece of information we’re trying to share.”     Application   For the application part, I decided to test it first with one classroom, I made an appointment with  all the students in that class, not only the ones I knew had problems and things to talk about.  Every day I met with a different student, in the first sessions, it was I who started the  conversation, about my youth, thoughts about certain topics, some even asked questions, and  we managed to maintain a conversation on various topics. In the following sessions, we focused  more on the students, now I asked them to tell me a story about their life, whatever they wanted,  most were happy memories of their childhood, others decided to communicate about an  adventure they had with their friends, some even dare to tell me about their family problems. It  was at that time I began to understand them more, their thoughts became clearer to me. Already  in the more advanced sessions, the students began to tell me about situations that overwhelmed  them, family problems, self-destructive thoughts, and social pressure, and we even discovered  bullies. After I got to know them from their stories, I knew how to better approach each situation.  Trying the best for the students, I advised some of them to also visit the school psychologist or a  private psychologist and I am glad to know that they followed my advice. They still come to see  me and tell me how they are improving.     After verifying that the sessions went well with one classroom, I began to implement this tool  with the other classrooms, I also spoke with the directors so that this tool is applied not only with  generation and not adolescents, but rather that we apply it with children as well. I met with the  teachers to let them know that this tool is one that they can also use, connecting with students  to understand them in a better way.

Insight & Approach  What I concluded from this exercise is that by applying the storytelling tool our teachers can  better identify the way students think. I was able to identify their concerns and also their skills.  It helped me focus on their problems as well as their strengths and goals so that I could encourage  them and seek help to better develop their skills. Once I started to tell them about myself, they  began to see the sessions differently, they felt more comfortable, it felt like two people having a  conversation, not just a teacher questioning a student. They felt more comfortable telling me  about what made them happy and sad.     In conclusion, this approach of storytelling serves its purpose of getting people to make a  connection and understand better one another. Next time I would use an implement, the  visualization tool with some students to help them express their thought, to achieve a shared  understanding of their minds. Ask them to create graphics or bring pictures to tell the story along  with them. So, I can better understand their feelings at the moment and to share the point of  view of the story told.

