Comments on: On Romance and Foundational Stories http://www.marthaburtis.net/wrapping/2007/09/04/on-romance-and-foundational-stories/ tales of swimming upstream Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:42:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 By: Gene Roche http://www.marthaburtis.net/wrapping/2007/09/04/on-romance-and-foundational-stories/#comment-18962 Gene Roche Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:48:38 +0000 http://www.marthaburtis.net/wrapping/2007/09/04/on-romance-and-foundational-stories/#comment-18962 One of the finest teachers I ever knew started his freshman advising sessions by handing students their first blue book and asking them to take their first real college test. He'd ask them to fill some pages answering the question "what do kind of person do you want to be when you leave here four years from now and what can the college do to help you become that person." I know from talking with generations of students how powerful that experience was for his advisees and how that story became a powerful archetype of what it really meant to be a student advisor rather than a signer of schedule forms. <blockquote>I wonder if in those answers they are crafting the first paragraph of a new story of their own, and I’m struck by what it means that they have now publicly answered and shared that respons. </blockquote> It will be fascinating to see how the stories launched in these hundreds of blogs at UWM play out. One of the finest teachers I ever knew started his freshman advising sessions by handing students their first blue book and asking them to take their first real college test. He’d ask them to fill some pages answering the question “what do kind of person do you want to be when you leave here four years from now and what can the college do to help you become that person.”

I know from talking with generations of students how powerful that experience was for his advisees and how that story became a powerful archetype of what it really meant to be a student advisor rather than a signer of schedule forms.

I wonder if in those answers they are crafting the first paragraph of a new story of their own, and I’m struck by what it means that they have now publicly answered and shared that respons.

It will be fascinating to see how the stories launched in these hundreds of blogs at UWM play out.

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