Featured Graphic by Destiny Mizell
Story by Anna Kaserman
National World Storytelling Day, March 20, is a day for recognizing the unique stories people share daily.
Middle Tennessee State University celebrates how the campus has shaped day-to-day stories with diversity and inclusion.
Janet Mccormick, a communications professor and storyteller, feels the relationships between students and professors affect each other daily as they learn from one another through storytelling.
“Stories can capture an organization’s achievements, commitments, struggles and even pain as we grow and learn — hopefully with an appropriate sense of humor through it all,” Mccormick said.
The heart of World Storytelling Day is the theme. Themes throughout the years range between more and less serious. For example, the 2014 theme was “Monsters and Dragons”. This year’s theme is “Together We Can.”
“Together We Can” emphasizes unity in difficult times, such as the pandemic and other struggles from the past two years. It’s a topic for college students to reflect on as a community gathering to learn.
Following the theme, Mccormick feels MTSU does a fantastic job creating communal learning environments. She highly values experiential learning in her classes, where the course provides hands-on learning exercises.
“Students are required to reflect on the experiences orally or in writing, which encourages them to practice telling their own stories of making sense of, making connections between and retaining what they are learning,” Mccormick said.
She thinks that the ability to retell and provide examples of stories for feedback purposes is important. Mccormick said it gives students the opportunity to collaboratorate with professors equally.
Every day creates a new story. World Storytelling Day is an opportunity for students to learn and share experiences in a community setting.
To contact Lifestyles Editor Destiny Mizell, email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, or follow us on Facebook at MTSU Sidelines or on Twitter at @Sidelines_News.
