When you see the light go on in the eyes of someone whom you’ve been guiding along on a process!

Today I feel like I had not one, but two breakthroughs!

One of my sessions at Downsview Public library is attended by one boy mostly, who’s been coming pretty darn regularly. When he first began I worried about being able to keep his attention.

Today! I had the idea of getting him to write about his favourite video game or movie character, as if it was him!

Wow!

So he wrote as Michael Jordan, and at first he only wrote one page. And as he read it back to me I started to ask him questions. Try to get him to imagine more details. What about the fans? What would it really feel like to be Michael Jordan and there was only say eight seconds left of the game and your team and the fans were expecting some sort of miracle?

As I teased some more details out of him, he started writing again, and this time, he was so intent, that he finished three pages easily. It was amazing to see this boy who had always been easily distracted, getting so intense in this writing exercise! He wrote for a good solid ten minutes! And at one point I asked if he was done. He answered, “Nope. Not yet.”

I just thought wow!

And then during the adult public speaking program, a very determined lady came by, and I was just amazed at the improvement in her storytelling skills.

She wanted to focus particularly on some issues, but she said that whenever she tried to address these issues with friends and acquaintances they got angry at her. I told her to couch each issue in the form of a story. Some sort of anecdote she’d observed. She’d already been able to do that with the idea that children should be more caring towards their parents! Last week she’d told a very moving story about an old woman and her pig!

I told her she needed to treat the other issues in the same way. Nobody wanted to be lectured. But if you couched what you wanted to say, in a story! Well! Everyone loves a story!

And just seeing the look on her face…

It was priceless!

Can’t wait till next week when she comes back with the stories! Insha Allah!