Abstract
Not long ago, a teacher of troubled youth grew weary of the school district’s failure to understand why it was difficult for her students to come to school. She asked her students to “tell truth to power” by sending the school superintendent a booklet of their personally crafted life stories. In the 5 years she has taught at Penny Lane, Jane has come to connect with many of her students and feel the weight of young lives laced with homelessness, violence, and drug abuse. When school authorities ask, “Why don’t these kids come to school?” Jane responds, “How can these kids possibly show up every day considering the problems they face?” She wanted the authorities to provide economic and political support for the work she was trying to do. As she explained the writing assignment the students grew silent and their eyes drifted up to the ceiling as they considered her proposition.
I was doing well for a little while until that little demon came back into my head saying this stuff was boring and to experiment again. Stupid me, I listened.
(Suzanne, age 18)
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Notes
- 1.
Proper names have been changed to mask identities.
- 2.
“Knifing off” is a violent masculine metaphor that does not seem to reflect how Suzanne undergoes transitions between the bad path and the good path.
- 3.
On checking with Jane, Avril learned that Jeff borrowed his story title from another student. How much do researchers miss by not knowing the process by which life stories are written?
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Acknowledgments
We are deeply grateful to Jane’s students for entrusting us with their stories and to Avril’s research group for their comments on a prior draft of this chapter. We would especially like to acknowledge feedback from two anonymous reviewers and from Paul A. Nelson, Lauren Shapiro, Steve Bearman, and Barrie Thorne.
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Eagan, J., Thorne, A. (2010). Life Stories of Troubled Youth: Meanings for a Mentor and a Scholarly Stranger. In: McLean, K., Pasupathi, M. (eds) Narrative Development in Adolescence. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89825-4_6
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