We Love a Good Story!!

One of my favorite niches in which to practice speech pathology in the schools has been with literacy. I love to dig deep into the relationships between reading comprehension and language, writing and expressive language, and all the pieces and parts.

The longer I practiced, the more interested I became in the relevance of oral language to orthography and an idea that to read stories effectively, we first have to hear and understand them. To write, we need to be able to tell.

Telling stories is something that makes our human lives unique. For us, communication is far more than utilitarian; more than survival and instruction, it is enrichment, enjoyment, intimacy, and relationship. It is culture and creation.

“Telling stories does far more than link disparate images together; it allows us to understand information and unites us in our beliefs. Furthermore, narrative structure may be biologically based and hardwired into the very architecture of our brains. The new research in neuroscience has no definitive answers yet, but the findings suggest that stories work like threads that strengthen neural connections, integrating the separate hemispheres, thereby allowing our brains to function in a more complex and unified manner.”
–Gabrielle Selz, Tell Me A Story: Why the Brain Loves a Good Yarn, BrainWorld magazine December 2017

At ArSHA, we’d love to hear your stories. Tell us about your practice. Tell us what drives you and where you have developed as a professional. Our call for papers deadline is coming up September 20. The link to submit your paper for the ArSHA conference is here: https://www.arsha.org/annual-convention-call-for-papers/

Get geared up for loads of engagement sharing experiences with your colleagues from across the state!  We look forward to hearing from you!