Hair Pin Turns: Fourteen Stories of Imaginative & Thoughtful Learning

By Peter W Majoy

Hair-Pin Turns is a collection of stories intended to be read quietly and out loud. The oral and listening activities involved in experiencing the stories are meant to activate rich internal image making. When carefully read out loud, the reader should use tonal changes of voice, dramatic pauses, and improvised facial and body language and gestures.Hair-Pin Turns participates in the revival of the oral and listening tradition which our culture very much needs as an antidote to the mentally poisonous overload of meaningless speech and visual images which have created millions of passive and anesthetized children, teens, and adults who have lost contact with themselves and what they are capable of feeling, learning and doing.Hair-Pin Turns hopes to have children, teens, and adults develop the following goals: (1) appreciation of the spoken word through attentive listening made possible by experiencing rich images; (2) appreciation of oneself as a limitless resource of images and feelings; (3) greater and more insightful thought; (4) more substantial dialogue about sensitive personal and social issues; (5) integration of feeling and thought, body and mind; (6) expression of thoughtful and sensitive verbal and visual forms such as stories, essays, journals, paintings, and drawings.Hair-Pin Turns is intended for use with children, teenagers, and adults. Some of the stories are more appropriate for certain groups. Indication of this is made in the Table of Contents and the Introductions to each section of the book. Most of the stories have no audience/reader limitation. After each story there are suggested activities which a parent, teacher, and group leader might select in order to enhance response to the story. Elementary, high school, and college teachers will find many uses for Hair-Pin Turns because the stories are universal, mythic, and magical in nature calling up from each person's soul and imagination the vast storehouse of ideas, images and associations which brain research has suggested is one of the most important routes to meaningful and lasting learning.The usefulness of silence and a sense of respect for the stories is a very important climate to create around listening to the stories themselves. That is why a preliminary period of 2-3 minutes of quiet meditative reading will initiate the process of unearthing feelings and images within the listener, young or older, and which will culminate in discussion and development of some form of visual and/or written response.The title, Hair-Pin Turns, came in a dream. A car was moving at a fast pace down the side of a tall mountain with treacherous turns at the edge of many cliffs. It was important to negotiate these hair-pin turns to make it to the bottom. These stories are, hopefully, useful in helping youngsters and oldsters to manage the hair-pin turns of life. Hair-Pin Turns is dedicated to the sense of wonder, curiosity and thoughtfulness which are at the heart of learning. To stimulate these is the only motive and reward for great teachers and students of all ages.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1688093761
• ISBN13: 9781688093768
• Release Date: August 2019
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.4" x 7.0"