From Collapse to Relationality Improv: High School Stories in Motion for Justice

Abstract

Youth live storied lives (made up of intersecting stories of school, home, peers, and other aspects of lived experience). Therefore, the ways in which youth construct and tell their high school stories are vital for understanding their experiences as first authors (primary creators, constructors, and tellers of their own stories) and protagonists (as active agents of these stories). This paper examines the physical and metaphorical movements that a research team experienced when constructing and sharing their high school narratives related to youth engagement in social justice educational change. Team members went from engaging restricted movements (which we, authors, have called collapse, truncation, or formulaic motions) to expanded motions (designated relationality improv, malleable formations, and the languages of the arts). This transformation reflected members becoming first authors of and meaningful protagonists in their high school stories of social justice and democratic educational change. For educators and researchers striving to support youth voice and engagement in educational change, an emphasis on movement (within youths’ story construction and telling processes) affords valuable openings to support youth in identifying and claiming their agency, engagement and change-making in high school.