This post is by member Brittany Collins.
鈥淲ho are you?鈥� was the most perplexing question anyone had asked me at the age of seventeen. A volunteer, a daughter, a dancer, a student . . . . I sifted through various positions and identifiers, offering a conglomeration to my English teacher as she sat expectantly in front of me. 鈥淭hose are things you do,鈥� she interjected, 鈥渂ut who are you?鈥�
Before I could answer, she returned to the vexing task of reviewing my Common Application essay, moving from soul to structure. But her question, quick and incisive, endured鈥攁 seeming bolt of lightning amidst the fog of adolescence. As I sat in her blue office chair, peering into my future, a lifetime of thinking began鈥攏ot only about who I am, but about who we all are, and why. I have since spent years amidst personal narratives鈥攎ine, as well as others鈥攅xcavating lived experiences, extracting the extraordinary from the quotidian whilst marveling at the synonymy of the two. Of late, I鈥檝e turned to matters of the classroom and wondered: Rather than utilize personal narrative writing as a tool for synthesizing past engagement, might English educators use the form to foster civic and philanthropic engagement in their students? Might writing spur action, rather than cap it? How? And why?
听The 鈥渨hy鈥� might lie in the wirings of our brains. Stories inspire action through empathy, as neuroeconomist Paul Zak reveals in his 2012 book . He dubs oxytocin鈥攁 neurochemical produced in the hippocampus鈥攁 鈥渕oral molecule鈥� that catalyzes empathic connection. His reveal that levels of oxytocin rise when one reads, watches, or listens to a story, reifying subjective accounts of narrative impact. 鈥淭hose who received [synthetic] oxytocin donated, on average, 56 percent more money to charity compared with participants who received the placebo,鈥� writes Zak, 鈥淸confirming the] causal role of oxytocin on post-narrative prosocial behavior.鈥�
How might Zak鈥檚 findings inform matters of civic engagement in classrooms? The metacognitive nature of personal narrative writing instills awareness of positionality and circumstance, and his findings prove correlative action, indeed positing the ways in which self-articulation transcends the self. If we, as educators, ask the right questions鈥攇round our students鈥� writing practices in productive and impactful inquiry鈥攎ight we slice a bolt of lightning into their lives? Might they, too, ask of themselves 鈥淲ho am I?,鈥� not in a manner of self-aggrandizement, but rather in an effort to articulate their convictions, interrogate the etiologies of those convictions, and better conceive of the layers they comprise? Personal writing is the playground on which to challenge narrative skills, to discover and share one鈥檚 story with oneself so that one may better share that story with others鈥攁n exchange that creates the oral histories that bind us, that imbue both soul and structure.
What issues of injustice are depicted in your current classroom text, and when have you witnessed these issues in real life? How do characters in the text approach issues of civic engagement or allieship (or, if they do not explicitly, how do you presume they might)? Which character do you most identify with, and why? What matters to that character, and to you? How does 鈥渞esistance鈥� manifest in the classroom text; does 鈥渞esistance鈥� differ from action, or are the two terms synonymous? What levels of discrimination are present in the plot? How about the writing鈥攈ow are marginalized identities portrayed through authorship?
Such questions are just the beginnings of possible prompts with which to spark personal writing. Once formed, students鈥� stories might fuel their actions鈥攖he sharing of those stories an action in itself.
Brittany Collins is the editor-in-chief of , the only online literary journal to publish the visual and written works of students who attend women’s educational institutions worldwide. She studied English and education at Smith College, has experience teaching literature and writing in educational and extracurricular settings, and is a freelance writer with a focus on English education.