(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . One year ago today, I was starting my 1 month ARTIST IN RESIDENCE at Glen Flora elementary [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-28 One year ago today I was starting my one month ARTIST IN RESIDENCE at Glen Flora elementary in Waukegan, Illinois. Here are some of the highlights from those weeks First week: • Most of the students were Latinx immigrants like me! • In one class two kids kept talking during my first story. The teacher explained that one kid was translating my story from English to Spanish (I used to be the kid who couldn’t speak English and needed a translator) so I told my next story in Spanish, so the kid could feel included. • One kid kept saying excuse me teacher. It took me a while to realize the kid was talking to me and calling me teacher. • I got to share my stories in Spanish (even those stories I never translated before) • I shared a scary story and one student said she also had a scary story, so I invited her to share it and she did. Second week: • I entered the classrooms to the enthusiastic chants of: “The storyteller is here”. It was amazing to know that they remembered me, and even better to learned that they remembered my stories. • Kids asking if I was visiting other classes and mentioning that their siblings had not been lucky to have me. • The class where one kid can’t speak English decided to have the storytelling in Spanish so that he can feel included, the students ended up translating to the teacher whose Spanish is limited. One class failed to do their assignments for the week, so the teacher took away my visit time with them. I was sad that I couldn’t see them but happy to know my visits are consider a reward. Third week: * As an incentive to get them to share their own stories, I offered a Guatemalan doll to any class where more than half of the class shared a story. As a result: Two full classes share their stories. * One kid shared a story in English and then shared the same story in Spanish * One class had a whole other class as guests, because they wanted to hear my stories. Final week: * One class wrote a story for me based in part on some of the stories I shared with them. * Every class ended up sharing stories and earning a Guatemalan worry doll for their class. * During one story I sang a verse from a song and the kids screamed "SELENA" as they recognize the "como la flor" lyrics. * I got so many hugs from kids as I said goodbye to them the last day. I managed not to cry until I started my drive back to city. Not bad for a guy that came to this country undocumented, with a stutter and not knowing the language! Now, I am a storyteller, an American citizen and I speak English with a sexy Latino accent. If you want to invite me to perform (in English or Spanish) my The Moth winning stories or to do a storytelling workshop at your school, university, library branch or company check out my web site for contact information https://www.nestorgomezstoryteller.com/contact.html [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/28/2155491/-One-year-ago-today-I-was-starting-my-1-month-ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE-at-Glen-Flora-elementary Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/