Shaping Your Story: Reading, Writing, Peer Share, and Discussion

This activity may work better with a group of youth who know each other well. Read “Foster Care on Stage” by Destiny Frasqueri in the group. Ask participants if they’ve ever thought of their own life as being like a play or a movie.

Next, pass out pens and paper and tell teens it’s now their turn to tell their life stories. Tell them they will have 15 or 20 minutes to write a short summary of their lives so far. They should think of their story as dramatic, like a play or movie—except they don’t need an ending. Tell them to stop at the present moment, that they’ll write the ending later. Emphasize that telling their story is what matters here—their level of writing ability does not matter and we are not concerned with grammar or spelling.

After 20 minutes, tell the teens that you’re now going to borrow a technique from The Possibility Project and collaborate. Ask everyone to pass their paper to their right. That person will read the story silently and then has 15 minutes to write an ending, set in the future, to their neighbor’s story. Ask them to write an ending that’s hopeful but not totally unrealistic. Ask them to think about both what they would like to happen in their own lives and what they think the original writer would like. Tell them to have fun with it, but to show respect for each others’ struggles and difficult experiences.

Return the stories and ask the youth to read their own stories out loud, complete with their neighbor’s ending. Some kids might not want to share their stories at first; tell them nobody has to read out loud. (But after everyone else has gone, ask them again; they may change their minds while others are reading.)

Finally, wrap up with a discussion that includes everyone, even if they didn’t read out loud. What was it like to write the next chapter in someone else’s life? Was it easier or harder than trying to imagine what would come next in your own life? What did you think about the ending your neighbor wrote to your story? Does it seem possible? Why or why not?