Telling Your Story

We teach Old Testament at Biola University, a Christian liberal arts school in southern California. We designed this exercise to fit the theologically conservative context of our school, but those in different contexts could adapt this exercise for their purposes. We find that our students often have a hard time understanding the difference between history (what happened) and historiography (a narration of what happened). A failure to notice this distinction can cause consternation whenever a student encounters different accounts of the same historical event, such as in Kings vs. Chronicles or in the Synoptic Gospels vs. the Gospel of John. To help students experience how historiography works in practice, we each do an in-class exercise called “Telling Your Story.” The students pair off, and each has 1 min to tell their partner their life story. They are naturally a bit shocked: How can a life be summarized in only 1 min!? We give them 1 min to prepare and then 2 min to swap stories. After they have done so, the next step is for each pair to gather with another pair. Each student has 30 s to introduce their partner by summarizing their life story in just 30 s. Besides helping students get to know each other, this exercise illustrates the decisions an author must make when narrating historical events. Which details are most important to include? Which can be left out? After the exercise, we reflect on the different ways to tell a life story. Some focus on their biological family relationships. Others focus on where they have lived. Some highlight their education and goals, while others in our Christian context zero in on their spiritual journey, telling when they came to faith in Jesus and how they have participated in the church. The way we tell our story changes depending on the context and audience. We then ask them to consider how their 1-min life story might change if they did this exercise in a different context. In southern California, working at Disney is an easy alternative scenario. How would you tell your story if you were hired at Disney? Most would not focus on how they came to Biola, but how they came to Disney. We often tell a version of our life story to communicate a certain point—why we behave a certain way or what we value deeply. This exercise uses autobiography rather than historiography as a teaching tool, as students tell their personal stories based on their memories, but the fundamental choices they must make are similar to any narrator. The stories we tell are by necessity selective, interpretative, and perspectival. Which events will we include? Which will we leave out? How will we describe those events? What overall impression will we give? We shape our stories for different purposes and audiences, just as the authors of Kings/Chronicles and the Synoptic Gospels have done. This exercise helps the students feel this dynamic in action so that they can become more attuned to the choices biblical narrators are making. The authors have nothing to report. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study

Historiography · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Philosophy, History, and Historiography