Celebrating the Stories of Your Life: 4 weeks – In person
Contact Janice at outdoorjan@att.net to ask about upcoming classes
or receive guidance on developing specific stories.
Develop stories around one or more topics for creating Story Journals, memory books or other art projects. Practice mind mapping to develop ideas for your stories. Share meaningful objects to reflect on meaningful people, places, events, traditions, treasures, life lessons and quotations. Multiple handouts provided.
Brooklyn Bridges, Former Administrative Assistant, Sierra College Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)
Janice Kelley has served as an instructor for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Sierra College since April 2022. In my role as an administrative assistant for the program, I have had the pleasure of working with Janice and witnessing firsthand the value she brings to our lifelong learners.
She leads Life Writing classes and facilitates writing workshop field trips, enriching the lives of our members through thoughtful instruction, creative engagement, and a genuine passion for storytelling. Her workshops are uniquely crafted to support and inspire writers of all levels, offering a wide variety of writing strategies and story starters that help participants explore their own voices with confidence and clarity. Students consistently share positive feedback about her supportive teaching style, her wealth of experience, and the inclusive, welcoming environment she creates.
Student Comments
“Janice, thank you for another great writing class! I’ve been delightfully surprised with each. The amount of resources you share is very generous, and the manner in which you deliver the information make it easy to understand and process. I’ve always dodged any brainstorming activity, but no longer.
Thanks to your no-pressure approach, my skill set has improved, my confidence has increased and I had fun!” Sharon L.
“Janice gave me a great deal of insights and observations about writing – including simple questions that one could ask of oneself to trigger a point of view, personal experiences, images to share with others in words and pictures, organizing one’s thoughts, intended audience or readership, keeping a thread to maintain writing cohesion and clarity, attention-getting opening lines, different writing formats – book, essays, blogs and simple paragraphs.” Sue R.
I really appreciated your suggestion to gather all my writing together. I am looking for Do I write clearly? Can others understand what I mean? I have a granddaughter who has asked for my writing. If I get my life lesson stories down, I can leave them for her. Gail L.
“ Until I took your class, i had a lot of stories and did not write any of them. Since your class, i written hundreds of pages, self published my first book and have several more to come…I want my children and grandchildren to know where they came from and stories about me.” Jim Messelbeck July 2025