What is an Education Narrative?

As we work toward Project #1, which involves each writing our own education narrative, we will read a variety of texts that get us thinking about education in a variety of ways, and in a variety of formats or genres. For this week, in addition to reading, watching, and writing about Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” here are three other texts for us to consider. They each come from publications in different fields about professionals in those fields:

• Katherine Peach, “Marc Murphy Talks Chopped And How A Dyslexia Diagnosis Changed His Life – Exclusive Interview“–focus on the sections from “The real reason Marc Murphy became a chef” through “Marc Murphy reveals chefs don’t have it easy” (use ctrl-F or Command-F to find that heading more than halfway through the article)
• Michael Caton, “Architecture Needs a Culture Shift“
• Ksenya Samarskaya, “Nontsikelelo Mutiti on Interrogating the Euro-centric Design Canon.”

Additionally, last week we read three texts:

• Mike Bunn, “How to read like a Writer”
• José Olivarez, “Maybe I Could Save Myself By Writing”
• Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts”

Please reply to this post with a comment in which you consider all 6 of these texts:

• Are these texts education narratives? Remember that education doesn’t only happen at school and isn’t always just for young people!
• Based on all of these texts that you think are education narratives, what are features of education narratives? What do some or all of these readings have in common that we could use to define the Education Narrative genre?
• Now consider reading these texts as a writer, what Bunn calls RLW. Is there anything in these texts that you read as a writer and would want to use as a model to describe your own education experiences? Consider everything on the screen, not just the written word! Think of any one of these readings. What’s something that stands out to you, or that affected you when you read it, positively or negatively–something that reached you. Is that something you would want to emulate?
• If you see a classmate writing about something you want to say more about, please reply to their comment with a comment. If you feel your whole response to my post is really in response to something that a classmate else wrote, please write it that way! No need to add generic “I agree” replies. I can turn on the “like” function if you want to boost each other’s work that way–let me know if you want that!