Welcome Back Everyone… A Story, a story… Let it come… Let it go…
It’s Fall, my favorite time of the year! Time to harvest the garden, add a sweatshirt when I walk the dogs, and start preparing for stories to share this year at school. I hope everyone is off to a great start! We met September 5th and had a chance to meet our new Spellbinders, Jessica and Howard.
Mark you calendars: Here are the dates for our chapter meetings:
October 3rd: Meet at Mountain Brew 8:30 am
November 7th: Meet at Mountain Tap Brewery 5:30 pm
January 9th: Meet at Holland House for Breakfast 8:30 am
March 6th TBA 5:30 pm
June 7th Holland House Potluck for year end celebration 5:30 pm
We will have a theme at our meetings based on some of the requests made at our Sept. meeting. When we meet in October we will share ideas on how to create interactivity in our stories. I’ll have suggestive tales that involve the audience, and techniques you can try for getting the kids involved. Bring your ideas to share!
Other topics suggested were good adult stories and Greek Myths. We welcome other ideas so let me know!
Here are the minutes from our meeting at Rex’s:
What do you do on your first day in your new classroom?
Great ideas were shared by everyone as to how they greet and meet their classes on the first day. Telling personal stories, setting expectations, and giving them ways to use their imaginations! Lots of unique and clever ideas!
We reminded everyone:
• Remember to wear your Spellbinder Name Tag
• Make sure your teacher has your contact information
• Keep track of stories told this year : See list is on the website : http://steamboatspellbinders.org/resources/
• Remember to ask teachers if there is any special needs or concerns in class
– Students who may have special needs
– Topics that are sensitive due to religious beliefs/holidays
– Special themes or topics in what months that might have curriculum connections to stories your choose
Business? Budget? And Beyond:
• Catherine Johnson is leaving in January
Catherine Johnson has been the Executive director of Spellbinders for 7 years. She is leaving to pursue a lifetime dream of writing a book. She will turn over responsibilities to the new ED in January but will continue to be involved until June.
• Steamboat Spellbinder Website update after it disappeared during the Hurricane in Texas
Our website went off-line for about 5 days due to the Hurricane in Texas. The website host, hostgator is located in Texas and had some difficulties. I hope it is back to normal
• Update Contact info: I sent our a current list of our chapter Spellbinders. Please let me know if we need any further updates on contact information.
• Budget update: The cost of our website for 2 years is about $75 . We are charging $40. for training to cover the badge, background check and a few snacks. Our current budget left is around $500.
Spellbinder requests: We have had a couple of requests to consider:
• Montessori school for special monthly programs (contact Liz Meissner : elizabeth@mvmcs.org)
• Casey’s Pond: quarterly visits – preferably with students also visiting?
• Other possibilities we discussed include;
The Chief, Perry Mansfield, The Foundry, local Bars, Middle School Science Camp
As we discussed it was suggested that we pull from our stories we already have prepared for a few themed tellings as request come in. I will make contact with some of the many possibilites as soon as the year is underway and schedules are set.
Spellbinder Programs we Might Consider this Year:
Halloween, Greek Gods, Nature Stories, Animal Attacks
New REQUEST from Strawberry Park Adventure Club: November 8th and or 15th. This would be on Wednesdays at 3:40 – 5:15 for 1st – 3rd graders and interested in the storytellers most interactive, favorite tales. I have done this in the past and it’s a great audience! I am going on November 15th and would love 2 other tellers to join me.
Finally, Marianne and I went to the Timpanogos Storytelling festival.
It did not disappoint! Such wonderful personal stories and music to set the tone! It was very inspiring and loads of fun. You can hear many of them on youtube by searching by name. I wish Carmen Deedy had more on-line but she has always been a favorite on mine. Check out Donald Davis, Bill Lepp, Charlotte Blake Alston. Shonaleigh, Josh Goforth, Sam Payne (Marianne liked this guy) Michael Reno Hall, and Brenda Wong Aoki. https://www.byutv.org/show/c8b056f9-f60f-4167-80dc-b3d710b80819/story-matters
Thursday night started with a full cast of all the tellers and then all day Friday and Saturday in huge tents with individual of paired tellers. The days flew by and the setting at the gardens were amazing. The picture don’t tell enough so ask Marianne!
Leave a Reply