Brainstorming Mo'olelo

My initial prototype of a writing prize will kick off tonight when I present the challenge to Nalu graduates, but my vision of the project is starting to expand a bit. Rather than envisioning an essay or story prize, I see Mo'olelo as a potential organization that doesn't just challenge students to submit examples of good storytelling, but, in fact, teaches students to tell their stories.

Details are highly malleable, of course, since this is still very much an emergent idea, but my basic concept is a four-week summer program open to kids from across the island. Funding could come in the form of grants and donations combined with maybe a small tuition for students able to pay (since I would want native and low-income students, too, I would try to make it easy to get tuition waived). Through the four weeks, students would work closely with each other and with their teachers to develop storytelling skills, including generating creative ideas, adapting real-life situations, effective embelishment, vivid word choice, public speaking, writing, and active listening. In the fourth week, students would compose an original story and present it at a final symposium for all the students.

I believe there's an intrinsic value in just participating in a program like that - though outreach to low-income and native students would be important to ensure participation - but the other end of it could still be competitive (as a source of motivation). There could be a monetary prize, of course, for a winning story, but more a more promising offer would be a scholarship, whether through Kamehameha Schools or some other organization, or perhaps internally. Tying the award money to furthering a students' education not only adds to the validity of the program, but also encourages students who already know how to tell their stories to get into situations and places where they can make a difference because of those skills.

In the short term, Nalu graduates will hopefully provide me with a small pool of entries so I can evaluate the kinds of stories that students will produce on their own. In that sense, the current effort is a kind of background research into the potential audience for the larger effort. In the meantime, I think the prototype I need to build for the second digital artifact is a website that lays out the architecture, background research, funding possibilities, potential partnerships, and so on for making Mo'olelo a reality.

One of the really promising things about this model, to my mind, is that it is not limited to Hawaii. The name Mo'olelo may be particularly Hawaiian, but there are cultures and stories and students who need to learn how to write and speak and engage as listeners everwhere. A discussion and writing oriented summer program that hones those skills may not be for everyone, but it certainly could find a market in just about any part of the country (or world), especially if it is tied to scholarship money and other educational opportunities.

Obviously I'll be thinking more about this, and would love any feedback. Challenging my assumptions, poiting out things I haven't thought about, and forcing me to be more well-rounded in my background research are quite welcome. I see a lot of potential here, and it aligns very well with the topics and people I am most passionate about. That said, I'm trying to keep a reserved optimism about the idea, knowing full well that my current brainstorms will almost certainly look nothing like the final result.