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Last week, I had the joy of seeing my third-grade colleagues put on storytelling festivals with their students. As a culmination of their fairy tale unit, children told their stories to one another. I love to listen to kids, love to hear students I know - just KNOW! - will shine through this medium. Even better, I love to watch their teachers, seeing children's talents and strengths from a different direction.

An in-person festival, COVID-style
A Zoom festival, because sometimes that's how you get it done

I'm so grateful to my colleagues for getting brave about tracing a new path with this unit. I'm so grateful to the students for getting brave in their telling. And I'm grateful that storytelling, true to form, has revealed surprises that (to me, at least) have always hidden in plain sight.

Today's poem is for them.

I told you so,
told you the telling
would tell
all I hoped it would,

I told you so,
that all you have to do
is
tell a story
and your wiggly ones
and your prickly ones
and your hard-to-reach ones
would sit,
rapt,
engaged in jargonspeak

I told you so,
that all you have to do
is
let them tell a story
and your mouthy ones
and your sticky readers
and your tricky writers
would find themselves,
would find voice
and voices
and reveal stories
and story structure
and plots and subplots
and complex sentences

I told you so,
that all of those things
we hope come out of pens
or keyboards
pour forth
from mouths,
through bodies
into ears and hearts

I told you so,
that storytelling
would bring you surprises:
children gathered
from the fringes
and held
to new light,
sparkling