Storytelling Arts Inc. Spot

Hop online

2012-01-20T08:33:00.000-08:00

Hello, I am Julie Della Torre, Master Storyteller with Storytelling Arts, Inc. I have been working as a Professional Storyteller since 1985 and have 9 years of elementary school teaching experience along with the study of child development and curriculum. More information about our work in storytelling and education can be found on the Storytelling Arts website http://www.storytellingarts.net/

I find I'm hopping online more and more often when I need to find a story. I'd like to share a few of my favorite sites with you, and hope you will respond with a few favorites of your own.

SurLaLune

By far the site I visit the most is SurLaLune http://www.surlalunefairytales.com hosted by Heidi Anne Heiner. It is a site that is quite easy to use and I recommend you play in it and discover all it has to offer. The site has stories galore as well as essays, illustrations and so much more.

When you first open the site you immediately see on the left, an index of popular European fairy tales. Click on any one of these and wonders appear. The full text of the story is given with annotations. Another index appears on this new page and you can find a history of the tale, illustrations of the tale, similar tales from across cultures, modern interpretations, a bibliography and a book gallery. For some of the most popular tales there are links to other explorations of the tale.

But don’t stop there. Go back to the home page and across the top is another menu. Click on Introduction and a number of essays can be found. Yet another index pops up and you can go to discussions of such subjects as Disney and Fairy Tales, Women and Fairy Tales, a Guide for Teachers, and many more.

Speaking of discussions, the discussion board is a place to find out what storytellers, authors, folklorists, professors, and illustrators are thinking and working on in the field of fairy tales. There are current discussions as well as archives covering many topics of interest.

And there is more on the home page. Scroll down and you will find an empty box with ‘search’ beside it. Type in any word, for example, wind, or daisy, or self-control, and the whole of Surlalune will be searched for your topic. You may find annotations, or discussions, or illustrations. It is a very useful search engine.

And one more overlooked feature. Under the search engine is SurLaLuune Storytime. Here you will find ideas for preschool story programs developed around themes.

SuLaLune has recently introduced a blog to the site. I find it to be funky and eccentric. I go to it for fun, but am still trying to get used to it. You will find many reviews of new books, movies and movie trailers, advertising, allusions and the like, all related to fairy tales.

Story Lovers World

Another site I frequent is Story Lovers World hosted by Jackie Baldwin. This site is more for gathering ideas around themes, countries and educational levels. This site does not have stories available, but when I am working on programs, I find this site quite useful indeed.

The site is a little overwhelming and a bit more confusing than SurLaLune. That’s because there is just so much information tuck away in different places. Go to SOS Site Map (Searching Out Stories) http://www.story-lovers.com/listsofstories.htm and scroll down and down and down… You will find categories based around theme, age of audience, country, holidays, emotions, and many more. Keep on scrolling because the list is extensive. If you stop at a find at the top of the scroll, you may miss some very interesting stuff. If you wait to the end though, you will have forgotten what’s at the top.

When you click on an interest, you will find lists of books and stories, as well as ideas and discussions from other storytellers. Most of these discussions are from the popular listserv STORYTELL. My creative juices get flowing as I explore what other storytellers have chosen for a particular project.

Jackie Baldwin is a very generous storyteller and has complied stories, activities and books around such themes as water, winter, January and so forth.

Briefly, here are other sites that are bookmarked on my computer.

D.L. Ashliman’s Home Page: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/ashliman.html

This is the site I go to for the text of stories.

Aaron Shepard’s Home Page:

http://www.aaronshep.com

All Aaron Shepard adaptations. But, he does have some good activities and some readers theatre that I send teachers to.

Generosity of Spirit: Myths and Folktales

http://learningtogive.org/materials/folktales

This site is sponsored by the Fetzer Institute. I found it and used it when I was collecting stories to accompany a program on character education. I used some of the stories, but found that the stories listed made me remember other stories in my repertoire. A site to explore at least.

Sacred Texts

http://www.sacred-texts.com

Texts of many books of myth and fairy tale.

Spirit of Trees

http://www.spiritoftrees.org

A beautiful site of folktales, myths, essays and poems of trees.

Pourquoi Stories of Nature

2011-12-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

What does it mean when a New Jersey cherry tree blossoms in late November? Or, when an antlered deer wanders into a densely populated suburban neighborhood?

The newspapers will tell us that we can look to global warming and overgrazed natural habitats for explanations. But if we look beyond the surface (not to belittle that surface), we can mine our imaginations to explain these phenomena. We can develop pourquoi stories.

Pourquoi is the French word for “why.” Pourquoi stories are told all over the world to explain why an animal behaves the way it does, or why a spider weaves its web so beautifully, or why a rainbow appears after a storm. These stories go beyond rational scientific explanations. They span the absurd to the sacred. They are part of the human experience.

In September, I told the Lakota Indian legend Tonweya and the Eagles at Morris County’s Juvenile Detention Center and Youth Shelter. The teenagers at these facilities are facing problems I can only poorly imagine. For our September workshops, I wanted to explore with them a story that could act as a metaphor for their situation and possibly give them tools that could help them make sense of what was happening to them.

The protagonist in the story, a young Lakota Sioux named Tonweya, wanders away from his hunting party and becomes stranded on a rocky ledge without an anchored rope. There is nothing for him to grab onto to either climb up to the top of the cliff, or climb down to the ground below.

Also on this ledge are two fledgling eaglets. They are abandoned by their mother. Tonweya and the birds keep each other safe using their natural instincts and talents to rescue each other from certain death. The story concludes with an explanation for why only the fearless and brave wear eagle feathers tipped with red. It is a majestic and soulful story.

The residents at the youth facilities listened attentively and analyzed Tonweya’s qualities that helped him survive dire circumstances. I left hoping the kids would think about the qualities they have that will help them survive. I hoped I had given each of them a metaphoric eagle feather to wear.

Stories can serve as tools to explain why things are the way they are.

But perhaps it is more important that stories can serve as tools to imagine the way things can be.

______________________

Ellen Musikant is a performer, teaching artist, workshop facilitator and story coach. As such she has been a storyteller in residence in schools throughout New Jersey including preschools, elementary, and middle schools. When working with the very young, Ellen plays within the story landscape and narrative, giving the children new worlds and new words. For older students, she inspires self-expression by enlivening folktales with creative dramatics. As a story coach, Ellen helps children custom and adults find their storytelling voices. Each residency and workshop she offers is designed to meet the needs of the client. In addition to her work with Storytelling Arts, Inc., Ellen enjoys performing in festivals, museums, libraries and a host of other venues. She is Storyteller-in-Residence at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Storytelling in the 21st Century

2011-11-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

A professional writer and editor, Maria LoBiondo's love of fairy, folk, and wisdom tales has been lifelong, although studies leading to her bachelor’s degree in education from Boston College and years as a preschool teacher deepened her appreciation. Maria’s life experiences have included work in low-income communities with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Utica, NY, and Providence, RI, and participation in artist Judy Chicago’s needlework effort, The Birth Project. She has told stories for the past 15 years at several venues, including Princeton’s Littlebrook School, the Princeton Montessori School, the Catholic Community of St. Charles Borromeo in Montgomery Township, and the New Jersey Storytelling Festival, in addition to her work for Storytelling Arts. Maria is a member of the Princeton Storytelling Circle.

Going through old papers recently I found this note from a storytelling visit: “Thank you for telling stories to my class. I enjoyed listening to the story ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon.’ I could picture the trolls in my head. I could see the prince saying, ‘Who can ever wash my shirt will be my wife.’ Hope you come back soon.”

Not only did the note make me smile, but it lifted my spirits after a day of feeling as if everywhere I turned there was another screen to view – my phone, my computer, a TV attached to the elliptical machine in the gym, another in the supermarket checkout line, and another in a favorite restaurant, not to mention the TV in my living room. I don’t have an e-reader or an iPad, but I do have an iPod, and even though it’s not the latest version, it has a screen, too.

All those screens vying for my attention, feeding me images, both stimulating and distracting. But how much of my imagination did they engage?

When telling a story, the images of what is happening as the plot unfolds cross my inner eye as they might a movie screen but I am creating the scenes anew with each telling, and no two tellings of the same story are the alike. I may have seen a troll with three heads and countless warts on each nose, but my student listener created her own troll, as scary or comical as she wanted it to be. Both of us used our imaginations to make the story come alive.

For some time now I have been trying to reconcile my feelings about 21st-century digital technology and the ancient art of storytelling. I know there is no turning back to fewer screens competing for our attention. I know that the future will bring more tools to use to converse, research, and entertain.

In frustration, I listened to Thomas Freidman’s “The World is Flat” in my car while driving to and fro this summer. Friedman’s storytelling – whether he gave an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the birth of a new company – won me over.

He employed short narratives to make his points rather than simply a barrage of information.

Friedman makes a strong case for beefed up science, math, and engineering courses in our schools, but he also suggests that stimulating the imagination is critically important.

To my mind, storytelling does this at all age levels. It helps us have all sensorial cylinders firing as we listen, visualize what’s happening, and create for ourselves the touch, smell, and taste evoked in the tale. The give and take between teller and listener means a story is never static, never just consuming passively, because the story becomes alive as it is told as the teller and listener create the images they “see.”

Imagination is a way of seeing. Before we can “see” big things like societal change or starting a new business it’s helpful to start with something as small as imagining trolls. All the number crunching computers can do won’t mean much without the imagination of people to apply the information in new ways.

Which brings me to Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Telling and listening to stories, visualizing and reflecting on the images we create, promotes imagination. The ancient art of storytelling is as important today as it ever was.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

2011-10-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

Last week I took my baby grandson on a walk along a greenway that passes by the edge of my neighborhood. As I pushed the stroller through a woodsy stretch, noting the change and fall of the leaves, listening to the blue jay who announced my arrival, I was suddenly startled by the sight of a ghoulish face peering through the trees. The face was bright blue, as lean as a skull, with eyes full of malice. It had been painted on the round end of a log, part of a tree that had fallen victim to the wind and rain of hurricane Irene, and positioned so that it seemed to hover in the trees at the edge of the path. After recovering from the abrupt rise in my heartbeat brought on by the unexpected vision, I paused a while to admire it and then strolled on, pleased that a little art had slipped itself into my nature walk.

As I continued walking, I began to think about the subject of the painting, the nightmare-inspiring face of a creature from beyond the grave, or certainly beyond the reach of mortal power. I don’t know who the artist is or what inspired the piece, but I’d bet the painter is a teenager. I’m making this assumption, in part, because the painting took me back to a discussion I had in one of my middle school workshops a couple of weeks ago. It was the first workshop after summer break. The students were 8^th graders, most of whom have been in my storytelling program for a couple of years, so the conversation was lively and comfortable. We talked about what we had done over the summer and, since we’re all story lovers, the conversation turned to what we’ve been reading.

All of the students were reading Young Adult novels about vampires, werewolves, and wizards, or about the sinister four horsemen of adolescence: humiliation, depression, disease, and death. I have to say that, at the time of the conversation, I wasn’t surprised or alarmed to find that my students are drawn to books about the dark side. I was also drawn to darkness at their age. What I though as I walked (and watched the peaceful little face of my grandson) was, how ironic that our children are drawn to the very things we, as teachers and parents and grandparents, try hardest to hide from them. We want so much to preserve their innocence, to delay for as long as possible their awareness of sadness and evil in life, that I think sometimes we risk sending them into the world unprepared for the dark reality they’re bound to confront. In fact, their fascination with evil may be a survival mechanism that protects them from our over protectiveness.

When I first began telling stories to children outside of my house, I remember a lot of discussion among parents, teachers, and, I suppose, scholars and psychologists, about whether traditional folktales were appropriate literature for little ones. When I looked at children’s books, I found that many of the traditional stories from my own childhood had been cleaned up by authors and editors. Wolves no longer ate pigs, grandmothers, or little girls; sadistic step-sisters became spiteful but comical oafs; murderous mothers were no longer punished; and no one ever died. I remember trying to navigate my way through this controversy. On the one hand, I knew that the authentic, non-Bowdlerized versions of traditional stories speak to some deep part of the human soul and assist in its development. On the other hand, I wanted to work, so I didn’t want to gain the reputation of the storyteller who scared little kids. I found my way through this mist in an elementary school in a Northern NJ city where, for four years, I told stories to a group of children, looping with them from kindergarten through third grade.

The project was part of a study to see if children who were exposed to storytelling through their primary school years would show a measurable difference in literacy skills from students who didn’t receive the services of a storyteller. The control groups were the grade levels on either side of the students with whom I worked. The study was, I believe, inconclusive. There was anecdotal evidence from teachers of improvement in individual students’ abilities to listen, speak, and maintain focus during the storytelling sessions, but because of budget restraints, these sessions were limited to two forty-five minute workshops a month. Also, due to the transient nature of the school population, less than a third of the original students were still in the school at the conclusion of the study.

However, regardless of what anyone else learned through the study, I learned a great deal about the lives of my students. For example, one day, in the spring of their the second grade year, I told them “One My Darling,” a story from Diane Wolkstein’s Haitian folktale collection, The Magic Orange Tree. In this story, which shares motifs with “Cinderella” and “The Seven Little Kids,” an ogre runs off with the Bad Mother’s three darlings, leaving only her fourth, despised, daughter behind. After this event, the story follows the fortune of the fourth daughter without ever revealing the fate of the three abducted girls.

When the story ended, the children asked the inevitable question, “What happened to the three darlings?”

I answered, as I always do after this story, “The story doesn’t say. What do you think?”

Usually students think the ogre ate the three girls and I point out that, although that’s a possibility, there may be other answers, other stories. This usually leads the class into a story making activity in which they invent endings for the ogre and the other girls.

However, on this day when the question was asked, a little boy promptly answered,

“They probably got raped.”

I looked from the solemn face of the child to the horrified face of his teacher, and then to the twenty-some other faces in the classroom. A few children looked puzzled, a couple nodded sagely, and the rest sat looking expectantly at me. I knew I couldn’t ignore the little boy’s response, but I also didn’t feel equipped to talk about rape with seven year olds.

So, after a second, I just said, “Maybe. What else?”

“The ogre probably ate them,” said another student.

And so the conversation continued along the usual lines. With a couple of important exceptions. First, the teacher learned that at least one of her second graders knew something about rape. (This may not have been significant, but if it was, the door had been opened for further investigation). And second, the kids realized that they could say things in the storytelling discussion that they couldn’t say in other places. This realization opened a door into the out-of-school lives of the students that, among other things, reinforced my belief that children need a balance of darkness and light in their literary experiences. Young as they were, these children welcomed the opportunity to talk about scary things in a safe environment. My unexpurgated folktales gave them that opportunity.

In my final months with those students I learned that many of them had first hand knowledge of the darkest content of the stories I had been discouraged from telling them. They had been subjected to physical and emotional abuse, witnessed the effects of drugs and alcohol, heard gunshots, seen neighbors or relatives arrested, lost loved ones to illness and violence, and lived in homes where there was not enough to eat. I think that we parents and teachers often forget that all of our kids live in a scary world, and even those living in the most secure homes and neighborhoods are exposed to fearful things. To pretend that these things don’t exist, to hush our children’s tears and reassure their fears by saying we’ll protect them isn’t ultimately comforting. Our children will face darkness on their life journeys. ‘Real’ literature helps prepare them for those encounters and gives them a fighting chance of surviving them.

THE SHOW FROM WHERE I STAND

2011-08-31T08:35:00.000-07:00

JULIE PASQUAL is a self proclaimed “creativity junky” whose first art form was dance. After graduating from New York City’s High School of Performing Arts, she danced and sang in numerous musicals across the country and Off Broadway. She has acted in everything from Shakespeare to the work of young playwrights in NYC high schools. Along the way she learned stilt walking, clowning, American Sign Language, and how to tell stories. Her storytelling work encompasses all her skills as a performing artist, as she brings every aspect of a story to life. Her stories have been heard in such venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Jersey Storytelling Festival, and in schools, libraries, bookstores, hospitals, radio and private events across the tri-state area. As an artist for Hospital Audiences Incorporated, Julie performs in halfway houses, drug rehabilitation centers and senior citizen homes. She is also the voice for several children’s and young adult audio books for the Andrew Heiskill Library for the Blind and Handicapped in NYC. When not telling tales she can be found performing as a dancer in shows across the country and as a clown doctor for the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, entertaining children in NYC hospitals.

“I’m soooooo sorry,” the mother of a six year old in my audience says. Her eyes begging for forgiveness, her head bowed in shame. “He just always gets like this!”

I shake the offered hand, and tell her, “Your son didn’t do anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Really?” she utters incredulously.

“Really,” I reply. And I mean it.

One of the joys/challenges of being a live performer is that I see the audience every bit as much as they see me. The dad in the back row on the cell phone – hi there, sir! The seven year old who keeps forgetting to cover her mouth, when she lets loose a juicy, mucousy cough – where’s my Purell? And the baby on the lap of a mom in the back, who’s either laughing or pooping – coochie-coo!! I kind of hate to admit it, but sometimes, the show I see from my angle, is a heck of a lot funnier, and more interesting than what the public is getting from me! And while every audience and every child is different – there are definitely patterns.

In folktales, there are specific character types know as archetypes: the Hero, the Villain, the Sage, and others. Though the details differ from story to story, the roles these people (or animals) play in the tales are remarkably similar. The Hero in one folktale might have to overcome an ogre, while in another he is charged with finding magical fruit. Different circumstances to be sure, but he always has an obstacle to overcome, and usually a young maiden to find/save/wed. And just as often, as I describe an archetypical trickster or silly for my audience, my viewing public is enacting, in very real time, some classic archetypes of their own. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce the “Mimic”, the “Know it All”, the “I’m Over It”, the “Performer”, the “Talker”, and last, but certainly not least, the “Nose Picker”.

The “Mimic”: I have to admit that the first time I witnessed this behavior, it freaked me out! There I was, going about my business, telling some story or the other in typical “Julie physical style” when all of a sudden, I saw at least a dozen little bodies mimicking my every move. Eyes wide, and absolutely silent, they were so absorbed by the story, I don’t even think they realized they were moving! Their focus was absolute, and they looked, I thought, a bit like marionettes. I raised my arms, they raised their arms. I scratched my head, they scratched their heads. They weren’t trying to pull focus, or get attention, they were just completely inside the story! After getting over the shock, I felt a little power crazy!! What if I could control other people this way? If I told a story to a bank teller, and mimed handing out money – would they copy my actions, and give me a fist full of dollars? Alas, the people at my bank know me by name, and just shook their heads, and laughed, saying, “Oh, that Julie!”

The “Know-It-All”: This is the child who, even before the story has begun, loudly announces to everyone, “Oh, I know this one!!” During every open-ended question, their hand is raised, and their face set in the smug smile of righteousness. If someone else answers the question first, the “Know-It-All” isn’t fazed. “I was going to say that” or “That was my second guess” are their quick come backs. Some people dislike the “Know-It-All” – not me! I adore (and wish I had more of) their self confidence and love of knowledge.

And the “Know-It-All” is often that sub-species known as the “Shusher”. Because the “Know-It-All” wants to hear the story BADLY – if only to prove they do in fact know it all, they give me their full attention – and they demand everyone does as well. I’ve seen “Know-It-Alls” stare down a noisy audience member with the expertise of a teacher, librarian, and preacher all rolled into one.

The “I’m Over It”: Okay, maybe like a mother, I’m not supposed to have favorites. But I do, and this group is it. I LOVE the “I’m Over Its”!! Their surly faces, slumped postures, constantly rolling eyes. “Bring it, lady,” their expressions tell me. And I love to oblige. See, I’m like that old song that says, “I’m a rebel, and I’m just no good.” If you tell me I can’t do something, I will work with every ounce of my 5’2” frame to prove you wrong. Choose to dare, double dare, or triple dare me, and watch out!

Every time I stand before a group of “I’m Over Its”, I feel my inner obstinate three year old stomp her feet, and dig her heels in. I become like the character, Effie, in “Dreamgirls”, who sings, “I’m staying! I’m staying! And you’re gonna love me!!!!!” These “I’m Over Its” make me dig deep, and bring out my A+++++ game (forgive all the sports analogies, but sometimes that’s the only way things can be said!) They make me keep working on my repertoire so that I have material that is intense, juicy, and special enough to dazzle them. I’m always pretty focused on my audience, but with the “I’m Over Its”, I am forced to really crawl under their skin, to find what moves, provokes, or tickles them. They humble me, because they always seem to appear after I’ve had several crowds of “Mimics”, just adoring my every move. And there is no greater payoff then when an “I’m Over It” sits up a little straighter, smiles a shy smile or, raises a hand to ask a question. “I’m Over Its” are tough, no doubt about it, but they are TOTALLY worth it.

The “Performer”: This is a group I COMPLETELY understand because, well, I’m one of them. You see, I love the arts. I adore them!! For my birthday this year, I saw a dance concert, and a musical show on the same day. Seeing creativity of any kind fuels mine – and that’s the problem. Because as I sit there watching dancers, singers, clowns, storytellers, mimes, and even sword swallowers there’s always about 80% of me (sometimes more) that wants to hop up on that stage, and join whoever it is that is currently performing. Now, I have learned to control my impulse to shove the ballerina out of the way, and take her place in “Swan Lake”, but a six year old “Performer” hasn’t mastered that quite yet. And so, unlike the “Mimic” who will silently sit in their seat, and copy my moves, the “Performer” uses every opportunity to insert himself into my performance. If I make a sound effect, the “Performer” will do it louder – over, and over again. If I do a character walk or pratfall, the “Performer” will concoct something that looks like a move from Cirque De Soleil, and perform that maneuver as many times as they can, sometimes crying out, “Watch me! Watch me!” – as if we all weren’t already!

While I will admit a “Performer” (or on a rare occasion – multiple “Performers” that feed off one another) can make my job a smidge difficult, they have also taught me one of life’s great lessons – how to let go! The nature of storytelling is all about the NOW. Telling this particular tale, to this particular group, and taking in the atmosphere and circumstances of this particular venue. When a “Performer” is in the house, I must let go of my plans, and see how it all plays out. Sometimes, the “Performer” quiets down to a slightly more vocal “Mimic”, and sometimes I land up with a partner for the day. Oh well, it’s always good to share. And maybe I’m mentoring a future storyteller!

The “Talker”: “Hi! My name is Rosalie. I’m seven years old, and for my birthday I got a Wii, and had a party. Do you like my dress? I have another one just like it in orange…” Well hello there, “Talker”!

While the “Performer” and the “Know it All” may interrupt the performance any chance they get, they are, for the most part, thoroughly engaged in the tale. The “Talker” on the other hand – not so much! The “Talker” does not mean any disrespect, and in fact, it is only because they like you (and your tales) that they feel the NEED to tell you EVERY detail of their lives. But given any opportunity the “Talker” will ignore the story, the other people in the audience, and very often their own parents, to inform you about their puppy, or turtle, or favorite flavor of ice cream.

Me: (During the telling of one of my favorite stories, “How Frog Lost His Tail”) Frog stopped laughing, looked up and saw…(I pause for dramatic effect, and to allow the kids to chime in, if they want to)

Little Boy: The watering bowl is gone?

Little Girl: The Sky God?

The “Talker”: The Monkey – I saw a monkey once at the zoo, and it was picking something off the other monkeys head, and then eating it, and I said, “EEW!” I wouldn’t want somebody picking something off of my head, and I wouldn’t pick…

And on and on and on!! It’s hard to get upset with a “Talker”, because they are always so darn cute, and the looks on their faces are the very definition of “earnestness”. I try to keep their absolute NEED to speak in mind, while I’m performing for inspiration. And, I hope, as long as I NEED to tell stories, I will. And when I don’t – I won’t!

The “Nose Picker”: What can you say about the children who are so oblivious to what we adults call “socially appreciate behavior”, that when their little noses itch, they plunge those fingers in there, and scratch away? I suppose you could say, ‘STOP! That’s not what polite ladies and gentlemen do!” But while, I totally agree that nose picking is something that’s best done in the privacy of one’s own home – you won’t ever see me telling my listening public not to do it during my performances.

Because, somehow, when I look out at that little “Nose Picker”, and all the other “types” of children I’ve written about here, I am reminded of a time in my life when I didn’t have so many rules! When, if I felt deeply moved or touched by a performance, it would spur me into action, like a “Mimic” or a “Performer”. Or if I wasn’t sure about something, I’d acknowledge it like the “I’m Over It”, instead of just slapping on my “Everything’s Okay” face. A time when I wasn’t too guarded, too afraid that my opinion would meet with opposition to express it, like a “Know It All” or a “Talker”. A magical time in life, when I was so absorbed in every moment, that I wouldn’t notice if I was picking my nose in public. That special time in life known as childhood. That’s the show I see from where I stand. And, oh, what a show it is!!

The Second Oldest Profession ~ Storytelling and Relationships

2011-06-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

More and more I’ve been touting storytelling as a powerful medium in which to build relationships. A good story is good. But the relationships it builds are even better. Way better. That’s it. That’s the whole elevator speech.

This year I took a semi-sabbatical from storytelling. But, several times each week, I tell stories in my role as Storyteller-in-Residence at the Zimmerli Art Museum. I tell the same two stories each time. They are terrific little stories. They are perfect for the early childhood learners who are brought to the museum to hear them. “The Gunniwolf” and “The Big Enormous Turnip.” Both are old folktales told many different ways and appear in lots of different books.

Sometimes I feel sheepish about telling the same stories again and again. The guards have heard them so often they can tell them “by heart.” Really! But these stories, as simple as they are, provide the perfect soil in which to grow and nurture relationships -- between me and the kids, the kids and the story, the kids and the art, the art and the story, the teachers and the kids, the teachers and the story, and so on.

I think of a story as built up energy. It is inert. It has the potential to be powerful. When a story is given voice, it has impact. At Storytelling Arts, Inc., we talk about an oral and very much alive “voice” for the stories we tell. We are not keeping our tales to ourselves, like dandelion wine bottled away and put in the cellar. We are uncorking them and pouring them into our listeners, who (if we do our job well) will in turn tell them to others. No doubt, when the story is released and exchanges “hands,” it will change and grow. That’s the nature of a told tale. Each teller/listener bond is different and each listener receives a story in her own way.

As professionals we craft a story each and every time we tell it so it is just right for the people who are listening. That’s been the challenge for me at the museum.

This crafting of the telling of a story is ancient. Storytelling is probably the second oldest profession! A primal need is satisfied by shaping our experiences (real and imagined) and then sharing them with someone else. Why? Isn’t the experience just as valid and exciting if kept to ourselves? Generally, I think it is safe to say, when something happens in our lives we have an itch to tell about it. We want to engage others in our experience. We want others to share the adventure. The experience itself becomes richer each time we do.

But, even more important, the relationships grow richer. We wander through a storyscape together and share a vivid and perhaps fanciful experience. Even if we never see each other again, we have formed an indivisible bond.

Luray Gross and I will be facilitating a Storytelling Arts Institute at the Moorestown Friends School in southern New Jersey June 28-30, 2011. I look forward to the many relationships that will be formed there.

Notes from the Field

2011-04-04T05:55:00.000-07:00

March 31, 2011, Luray Gross

LURAY GROSS works extensively in schools and the community presenting workshops and performances for all ages. Luray is the author of three collections of poetry: Forenoon was published in 1990 by The Attic Press in Westfield, NJ, and Elegant Reprieve won the 1995-96 Still Waters Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. The Perfection of Zeros, was published by Word Press in 2004. She was the recipient of a Fellowship in Poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2000, she was named a Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was the recipient of the Robert Fraser Open Poetry Competition Award from Bucks County(PA) Community College. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the 2006 Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, New Hampshire.

“Is this going to be a true story?” Jake asks as soon as I announce that I have another story for his class of second graders.

“It’s true that it’s a story,” I answer, but of course that’s not what he means and I know it. I go on: “Have you ever heard that a story is a golden lie that hides the truth? See what you think when you hear it.”

“Once there was a boy who decided to fool his father.”

“What day is tomorrow?” I ask, interrupting myself in that way a story can tolerate.

“April 1st. April Fool’s!” I have only 50 minutes for this session which will include poetry writing and reading aloud as well as storytelling, so I don’t mention the image of my mother that suddenly surfaces - Mother first thing each April 1st she somehow managed to trick us with a silly remark. Instead, I go on with the story telling how the boy decides to hide from his father, and while he is looking for a hiding place, sees a peanut on the ground.

“Wouldn’t it be great to hide in a peanut?” he thinks.

No sooner thought, than done; he is in the peanut shell, which gets swallowed by a chicken, who gets swallowed by a bush cat, and so forth. For each animal I add a characteristic call and gesture. The more outrageous the story becomes, the more obvious it is that the question of truth has fallen away before the forces of delight and anticipation: What creature will be next? How will the boy get out of the peanut? Will his father find him?

When the story comes to an end, boy and father reunited, we immediately begin a collaborative retelling of the story.

“I bet you could tell that story to someone,” I say. How does it begin?”

Of course the class, working together, is able to retell the whole story, with everyone participating in the “Buk, buk, buk” of the chicken, the “Yowl, miaow” of bush cat, the “sszzzz” of python.

It’s time for my transition: I tell them about Dr. William Carlos Williams, a poet very good at finding poems wherever he was, who was prone to jotting lines down on prescription pads during his forty years of medical practice in West Rutherford, NJ and how sometimes between patients, he would tap out lines of poetry on his office typewriter.

I have two brief image-based Williams’ poems in mind for sharing today: “Between Walls” and “The Great Figure.” I introduce each with a story - first the story of the doctor doing his rounds at the hospital and noticing between the building’s wings something green among the cinders from the coal furnace. Not a thing can grow there; what is that bit of green shining? A piece of a broken bottle, the poem tells us, a beautiful thing for anyone who has the eyes and the temperament to notice.

Another story: I invite the children to imagine Dr. Williams walking down the street at night. It’s raining, and suddenly - all at once it seems - the sounds of sirens. Out of the darkness a firetruck comes rushing, the big golden 5 painted on it, gleaming in the city lights. I speak “The Great Figure,” once and again, the second time inviting the children to close their eyes and see the scene, hear the sounds he mentions and others they know might be there. When we speak our images, one the students lightly clenches her fists and shakes them, “I heard the wheels rumbling! and I felt it!”

It happens that Williams’ friend, Charles Demuth, made a painting in response to “The Great Figure,” and I’m lucky enough to have a poster featuring the painting. Now we look at its somewhat abstracted image of the poem, noticing all the visual elements of the scene, from the bold gold “5’s” to the poet’s name partially hidden in the geometry of the painting. The children are looking closely, excited about their discoveries. We’re ready to leap into our own poetry talk and thinking.

“So, I’ve been thinking, where do our poems hide?” I allow a bit of quiet before improvising a line or two: “Sometimes mine hide in a wave that rises up and crashes down.....sometimes they’re hiding in the wrinkles on an old, old lady’s face...sometimes...”

The hands come up: "Mine hide in my brother’s smile.” “Mine hide in the sun!” “You could find them at the baseball stadium.”

We must make the move to individual writing soon, while the images are being born. “Okay, let’s go to desks and each write a poem describing some of the wonderful, exciting, beautiful, or silly places your poems could hide.” Fortunately the teacher has already placed fresh writing paper on each desk. I write the governing question on the board: Where do poems hide? and give them two possible beginnings: “I find poems in/on/under....” or “My poems hide inside...”

Inside a peanut? I ask? It’s a little joke, but Ryan goes on to write a funny informative poem about peanuts, which begins, “You could find a poem in a peanut, a very tasty legume.” It turns out that he has just finished a report on George Washington Carver. One of the glorious things about the creative imagination is that anything, virtually anything the child knows or wonders about can be material for his or her creations. After all, the story with which the class began has reminded us that anything can happen.

The class settles into writing and after a few minutes their teacher and I circulate, gently asking permission to “eaves-read,” reassuring a reluctant child, encouraging them to sound out words, inviting children to whisper read what they have so far. I am delighted and wish we had more than 8 minutes left for reading aloud. But that is what we have, so we invite the new poems or parts of them be heard! One boy has his hand up. This is the fourth day I’ve worked with these students, and I’m pretty sure that he has various special needs. Generally shy, he has volunteered to read first each day. Today he writes of delicious places for poems to hide: donuts and pies and M&M pancakes.

We hear short poems, long poems, virtuosic lyrical poems and bare bones matter of fact poems. Here are a few of their lines:

“Poems hide inside the video games I play with my dad.”

“Poems hide inside a flower taking a shower.”

“The mysterious dark follows me like a spy.”

“Poems hide under tables and chairs, under stairs and beds.”

“Poems hide inside a smile of a little child smiling at a bunny with fur as bright as snow...”

“I find poems in an apple tree, a fire gleaming bright as can be....”

As one girl wrote, “They hide inside anybody.”

Yes, poems and stories and music, dances and paintings. They are all there waiting to be found and to satisfy and delight their makers as they experience the truth that we are all capable of making something new and powerful out of our words, thoughts, and feelings.

Note: For one version of “The Boy Who Tried To Fool His Father,” see Judy Sierra and Stefano Vitale’s Nursery Tales from Around the World. The Williams’ poems can be found at www.poetryfoundation.org. Search by the poet’s name.

HEY PRINCESS!

2011-02-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

An interesting debate on princesses has been brought to my attention on the Motherlode blog of the NYTimes. My son, father of a 2yr old son and uncle to a 3 yr. old niece, follows the blog and sent me the following. Some great reading, discussion and debate commenced.

‘The Princess Wears Plaid’ By Lisa Belkin (February 3, 2011)

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/the-princess-wears-plaid/ discusses an article by Peggy Orenstein that led to the book "Cinderella Ate my Daughter"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/magazine/24princess.t.html?scp=1&sq=orenstein%20cinderella&st=cse

Ms. Orenstein in 2006 takes on the Disney corporation as a feminist and a manipulated consumer. All quotes below come from this article.

The discussion on Motherlode revolves around reading children’s books that show a more balanced view of girls, books that offer a healthy prototype of heroines. We as storytellers should feel obligated to do the same. There are hundreds of stories from around the world that offer strong, enterprising, loving, clever, and smart heroines who end up happily ever after. We should search for these stories and add them to our repertoire.

I am tired of corporations (in truth corporate owners) forcing their own views -- of beauty, of appropriate language, of appropriate behavior, of appropriate values, of appropriate skin color -- and telling us what is important in a good life. Imagination and thinking is taken from us.

“Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” “The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. “When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

Walt Disney and his studio follow a long tradition of changing oral folktales. Each time a tale is told it is changed. The problem comes when it is written down, or immortalized in film. Ownership is then possible. Jane Yolen (storyteller, author and folklorist) says in many articles that the old tales are always changing depending in part on who tells them and why. The old nanny who is putting the children to bed may soften the tales, shorten them, or change them so nightmares don’t ensue. Parents, or preachers, or dictators, may change them to teach a moralistic or nationalistic lesson. Entertainers change the tales to please each audience and thus ensure ample reward.

Walt Disney’s Cinderella is now the ‘real’ Cinderella story, and it is American. It’s told as a rags-to-riches story where anyone can wish on a star and dreams can come true with no effort at all. In Cinderella tales from around the world this is NEVER the story. In Grimm’s it’s a riches-to-rags-to-riches story in which Cinderella has to be clever, respectful, resourceful, and hard-working to regain her rightful place in society. Cuteness and idle waiting and wishing have little to do with this story. When I ask classes to visualize the princess in a story told (no matter where the story comes from) everyone, even teachers, see Disney’s Cinderella. This film version of a princess is now ‘the Princess’ in all parts of the world.

One can easily look up and track the changes made as the Grimm’s brothers collected their tales in many editions. By the time Disney got hold of the tales they had already been changed. Like the Grimms, Disney changed the tales to fit his own moralistic view of the nation and women’s place in it. Disney had strong views on America, the nation’s dream and of women’s place in American society. To hone his message, Disney took all the strength out of our heroines. The company infantilized these princesses and gave them no redeeming values. Then Walt Disney stamped his name all over everything associated with the films. Disney took complete control and ownership of our heroines. Walt Disney and the studio became one. The studio learned its lesson well and continues to control the message and the product.

Today the merchandizing of the Princess ideal helps girls and women believe that wearing the Cinderella panties or carrying the Princess Lunchbox, will help their dreams come true, their dreams of being a princess, marrying a prince and living happily ever after. ‘Princess’ is no longer about a story, it is a product:

There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items.

“Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

As a student of folklore I have issues with Disney and the old tales that differ yet overlap with the issues which concern Ms. Orenstein and the mothers on the Motherlode blog.

My strongest aversion comes with the fact that Disney has chosen one princess, his princess, for us and is now selling her to us all on everything imaginable.

Some further reading/background that I found illuminating on the topic:

Jane Yolen tackles Disney in ‘America’s Cinderella’ in Cinderella: A Casebook by Alan Dundes, and in Mirror, Mirror, ed. By Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple. Jack Zipes takes on the issue in ‘Breaking the Disney Spell’ in his book Fairy Tale as Myth: Myth as Fairy Tale.

I went to Surlalune and read the discussions that had taken place over the years. http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/ (see FAQ: Disney and Fairy Tales and FAQ Women and Fairy Tales)

My Heros!!

2011-02-22T06:08:00.000-08:00

To really understand how ironic what I’m about to write is, you have to understand this about me – when I was a kid, I HATED school. Not disliked, not “I’d rather be watching TV” – we are talking full on LOATHING!!! It wasn’t that I was incapable of doing well, it wasn’t that I was bullied, and didn’t have friends, it wasn’t even that I didn’t want to learn – no, it was just that I was the proverbial square peg being cramped into that round hole. I am, and have always been, a person that NEEDS to dance to their own drummer – schedules, too much structure, make me buck like a horse in the wild west. School, with all it’s rules, and requirements felt like a prison to me, so much so that as a child on Sunday nights, I would stay up as long as I could, hoping to extend my weekend that much longer. But always sleep would take me, and Monday, dreaded back to school Monday, always arrived.

So, in my mind, if school was a prison, than the teachers, were the guards. Like an inmate who knows who holds the power, and the keys to their cells, I eyed them with wariness. I was obedient, and dependable – always afraid of their power of me, over what my parents thought of me, over my life. It was only when I got to high school, and had a teacher, who really SAW me, encouraged me, and in a way adopted me, that I began to see that teachers were actual humans. Mr. Andros, my teacher/mentor/second dad showed me that teachers are heroes who day after day sometimes literally go into battle in their classrooms. They work for little money, and even less respect, it seems, but they have the most important jobs in the world. And now, years after many a school day spend eyeing educators with fear and suspicion, I find myself totally OVERJOYED to offer them whatever I can in my role as a storyteller.

In folktales there are often magical helpers that appear along the way as the hero or heroine makes their way on their journey. Often times they’ll give the hero something that, on the surface at least, looks to be simple, of little relevance to the task at hand. But time and time again in these stories, it is that little object that enables the hero to succeed. I like to think of the tales I tell like little presents, like Jack’s magical beans, that once planted in the minds of a teacher, might just help them in their heroic work of educating our future. I try with each visit to a classroom, not just to introduce the wonderful world of stories to the students, but also to their teachers, knowing I don’t even know a quarter of what they know, but hoping, beyond hope that I have served the story well enough so that it’s wisdom, and timelessness, can be seen by the classroom teacher, and, if they want to, use it in a lesson plan, or a discussion.

Oddly enough, given my history with teachers, it is that aspect that often gives me the most joy in my work with Storytelling Arts. I get to repay all those people, those heroes, who watched me looking at them like they were monsters, but taught me anyway. Who saw my gaze of distrust and fear, and kept offering all they had –day after day. Sr. Ann Robin, Mrs. Franklin, Mr. Manchester – I don’t know where you are today, but believe me - I GET IT NOW!!! I understand what incredible work you do, and while I still live outside, around, and on top of “the box” rather than in it, and too much scheduling still makes my stomach clench – I am trying to repay the debt I owe you, and every teacher whose classroom, my reluctant younger self ever entered! It’s the most I can do, as all you teachers – you hero and heroines go on your daily quests to open the minds of the world.

2011-02-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Harbingers of Spring

Myth is not merely a story, but a reality lived.

Bronislav Malinowsky

The sun is shining today. Melting snow is dripping from the eaves, sparrows are chattering at the feeder and the chick-a-dees are whistling their “swee-tie” song. It’s early February, the middle of winter, but the light and the sounds today are a reminder that spring is around the corner. It really is. Last week, when the Cailleach, the hag of winter, went out to gather the firewood she needs to keep her through the rest of the season, she had a hard time finding any under all that snow and ice. That’s a good thing. If she can’t keep her fire burning, she has to relinquish her rule to Brigid, the goddess of spring and fertility. In fact, Brigid is already among us. The first day of February is St. Brigid’s day. Storytellers know that long before she was a saint, Brigid was a goddess, the daughter of the Dagda who was the foremost of the Celtic gods. Brigid is a healer as well as a muse to poets and artisans. She created the first tin whistle and it was she who gave us beer!

The myth of Brigid and the Cailleach helps me understand the feeling I get at this time of year. February is, by reputation, a dreary time. It’s the month we need a midwinter break from school because we just can’t take it any more, the month for get-a-ways to the sunny Caribbean. However, February has never seemed so bad to me. On the contrary, there is something about the mid-day light at this time of year that holds a promise of green. The animals feel it, too. The birds, like the chick-a-dee, sing less of their flocking song and more of their mating song in February. Small mammals, like the groundhog, come out of their burrows, the ewes become pregnant. Hence the spring lambs!

Once you recognize these natural phenomena, the strange February holidays begin to make sense. And they are strange. Prognosticating rodents and match making martyrs? What have they to do with this short winter month? February 1^st is a cross-quarter holiday. It is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, another one of those days when the veil between this world and the next becomes more transparent. (The root of the Celtic word cailleach means veil.) February sets the stage for the burgeoning of spring. In ancient Rome, a festival of purification was held on February 15^th. Some sources say that it coincided with the seasonal rains that washed and melted the earth – a kind of ancient Spring Cleaning. In later times, Romans celebrated the Lupercal on this date. Some of the rituals associated with that holiday were directly related to human love and fertility. No one seems to know how the day came to be associated with a Christian martyr, but in researching the connection, I came across this fact: there is a flower-crowned skull purported to be St. Valentine’s on display in the basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.

The flower-crowned skull, an image familiar to fans of the Grateful Dead, is also a motif in one of my favorite stories, Fitcher’s Feathered Bird, collected by the Brothers Grimm. In this story, the crowned skull is a token left by the heroine for her evil ex-lover when she departs his house after designing his well-deserved fate. By this time in the story, the heroine has transcended her human existence and transformed herself into a honey-feathered goddess who proceeds to purify her corner of the world with fire. A connection to St. Valentine? Probably not, but the existence of the relic is evocative.

We go through our lives accepting these February traditions without feeling any connection to them because they are remnants of an age when the rhythm of the earth played an essential role in the lives of men and women. It was a much harder life than the lives of most people who are likely to read this blog, and the rituals that acknowledged the seasonal changes were often matters of life and death, both, literally, in their enactment and in the consequences of the phenomena they recreated. Even so, I can’t help but think that an acute awareness of the week-by-week changes in the natural world added a richness to life.

Familiarity with myth can restore some of that richness to our lives. Myth allows us to personify the natural forces and to make them part of the story of our own lives. Myth gives a human reality to the earth’s rhythms, and reminds us that they are inseparable from the rhythm of our heart, the rise and fall of our breath, and the coursing of our blood. Myth tells us that the earth begins fade in October as Demeter anticipates Persephone’s journey to the underworld and reminds us that now, in February, the goddess is beginning to make the world ready for her daughter’s return. She is awakening the animals, opening the wombs of the cattle, swelling the buds on the trees, sterilizing the ground with ice, then rinsing it clean with rain. Myth reminds us that no matter how much wood the Cailleach gathers on February 2^nd, Brigid is already with us to make sure that the old woman’s fire won’t last forever. There is hope in the stories of February. Read them and rejoice!

My life as an M.O.

2011-01-24T10:10:00.000-08:00

The words “motivational speaker” jumped off the page at me. I have been called A LOT of things in my life -– everything from creative to hyper to short – but never in my whole entire life had I ever been called a “motivational speaker,” and yet, that’s what I was being asked to be in a project I began this month for Storytelling Arts.

In my brain, a “motivational speaker” is someone like Tony Robbins -– particularly in that Jack Black movie from a few years ago “Shallow Hal.” Kind of tall, in a dark business suit, sprouting phrases like “Think outside the box!” or “Follow your bliss!” while running power point presentations in large ballrooms. And, while I have trouble even finding the proverbial “box”, and, if becoming a storytelling dancer clown who teaches yoga isn’t following ones bliss, I don’t know what the heck is –- I just couldn’t cozy up to the label “motivational speaker” (hereto referred to as M.O.) But, like we outside the box bliss followers sometimes have to do –- I had to make it work. Lucky for me, folktales saved my un-Tony Robbins-like rear end!

I don’t know where real M.O.’s get material that will at once teach life lessons, while keeping a crowd interested and hanging on their every word. But, all I had to do was go to my friends and teachers -- my folktale anthologies. Within the world of folktales are a great many stories that teach us things we all need to learn. Like the Jewish story “Feathers,” that tells of a woman who, after spreading rumors about everyone, is sent before the judge. To teach her a lesson about the dangers of gossiping, he instructs her to take a feather pillow outdoors, shake out all the feathers, and then try to get them back in again. When she finds that the feathers blow away, and that she can’t get them back inside the pillow, the judge informs her that it is the same things for words. Once they leave our lips, we can never get them back again.

It was “Feathers” that I told a group of 5^th and 6^th graders in my role of M.O., and the “Ooooh, I get it!” that came at the end of the story made me smile. The discussion we had after that story, told me that there was no better entry into this topic than the wisdom of the ancients who had created this gem of a tale. Back then, they didn’t have power points – they had stories. Stories that spoke, and continue to speak in a language we all can understand. Stories that don’t hit us over the head with a point, but rather, offer themselves up so that everyone can discover the lessons wrapped in them on their own.

Whenever I’m asked what I do for a living, I always joke and say, “I’m a storyteller/dancer/clown/yoga instructor/chimney sweep –- just kidding about the last one!” But, maybe I’ve got a better, and perhaps truer, punch line, maybe, thanks to my pals, the folktales, I can say I’m a storyteller/dancer/clown/yoga instructor/motivational speaker/chimney sweep – hey, the chimney sweep part is too funny to lose!!

I Saw a Young Man Fall in Love With Language

2011-01-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

I saw a young man fall in love with language this month. While that sight would always be a
gratifying thing, always make me do my happy dance just a little
bit, this was even more remarkable, because this event took place in a small
classroom, not in a school, but in a prison.

Over the last year and a half, my work with Storytelling Arts has led me into three Youth Detention Centers. And, each time I speak to people about this work, they are dumbfounded. “Are you nuts??? Aren’t you scared?? Do they listen??” – are some of the questions I hear from concerned and confused friends and family. I smile, because, frankly, I have asked myself the exact same things. So, as much for myself, as for anyone who might be reading this, I’ll answer those very sensible queries.

1) Are you nuts?? Of course, I am, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this!

2) Aren’t you scared?? Yes, but not in the way you might think. I’m not scared because I think I will be in any danger. I don’t envision burly men charging across the table trying to “shiv” me. No, I’m scared – well, nervous, actually, that I will not have the goods to reach through to these

young people – these kids. Because that is what they are – kids. They are children – even if they would never call themselves that – children who have made a bad choice. And who amongst us, has not? They are human, and the one thing I know “for sure” – as Oprah likes to say - is that humans are more alike than different. We all feel emotions, we all, in one way or another seek connection. The art of storytelling is all about connecting with the audience. A tale simply isn’t a tale until it has been told, shared with other human beings.

That is my worry -- that I will not be committed enough, articulate enough, interesting enough to touch these youths. Because folktales have the goods to inspire, teach, and move EVERYONE. With their archetypical characters, intriguing plots, they leave behind them a wake of interesting points to mull over, and to learn from. And, when I see audiences – be they five year olds, or the inmates in the Detention Centers, respond to storytelling, I know it’s not me, It’s the story. All I did was put it out there in a way they could hear. So, that’s my fear, that I won’t find the “way in” with my telling. Because if I can…well, let’s move onto the next question, shall we?

3) Do they listen?? YES, THEY DO!! I have seen a young man, who I was told was a double murderer, follow my every word like his life depended on it. I have seen another young man, whom I thought was asleep; lift his head, and his voice, to defend a character in a story. And, this past month, I saw that young man fall in love with language right before my eyes. He, and his “pod” had been told a wonderful story, by a wonderful storyteller – Paula Davidoff -- the day before, and he and two other fellows stood in front of their peers to retell it. LET’S JUST STOP AND ACKNOWLEDGE HOW AWESOME THAT WAS!

While the other two young men were more confident and outgoing, this fellow – I’ll call him J, was shy, stiff, and self conscious. With his hands tightly clasped behind his back, and his eyes lowered, he only spoke when his two companions “threw” him the story. But, then, half way through the story or so – he began to describe a horse as “strong and bold.” As he said those words, he too, became strong and bold. His body came alive, his eyes afire, and anyone could see his relish in saying that combination of words “strong and bold”. The little group then told another tale – this one they invented, and this time J was animated right from the start, interjecting wonderfully fluid language and body gestures throughout the piece. It was like seeing a flower blossom – the entire energy of the room had shifted and changed.

One could say this was a moment of victory, because that story, those words “strong and bold,” had reached into J, and touched on something that had lay dormant within him. He forged a true connection with that tale. And, connection is not only what storytelling is about, but what life is about as well. For to quote a book I just finished reading, “When you practice mindful connection, your life feels meaningful, and so it is.”

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Masks like those below were produced as part of a Storytelling Arts residency at the Mercer County Youth Detention Center in 2009. Students created these to depict character traits of people in stories as well as in real life -- including themselves.

Crossing Over

2010-12-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

Most of the posts on this blog have focused on the use of storytelling as a tool for child education. And that’s appropriate. After all, part of the mission of Storytelling Arts is “to promote and impart the living art of storytelling to develop literacy.” But the mission statement goes on to say, “and nurture the human spirit.” Although I believe in the deep core of my being that developing literacy is one of the best ways to nurture the human spirit, it’s not the only way that stories can nurture us. Stories have the power to touch the spirit in every human being, literate and illiterate, child and adult, by bringing magic into their lives.

In the ancient world, the borders between the dwelling places of human beings and the world of faery were all around. The crossing points were in all places that were neither here nor there: the threshold of a door, the midpoint of the stairs, a stile between two fields. Certain times of the day or the year also opened access to the other world. Traveling gypsies used to halt their caravans and stand still in the minutes surrounding noon (the moment when it’s not longer morning but, by definition, not yet afternoon), lest they accidentally cross into fairyland. The doors to faery also open at midnight, at dawn and dusk; at equinoxes, solstices, and at the midpoints between the seasons: May Eve and Halloween. Back in the day, a careless step in the wrong direction or at the wrong time could promptly land you in the other world.

Over the years, the magical places of the earth have receded farther and farther from our day-to-day lives. Now a days, it’s not easy to wander into them. (You hardly ever hear of anyone doing it anymore!) For the most part, this is a good thing. Tradition teaches us that hobnobbing with the fair folk is, at best, a mixed blessing. They don’t share our sense of propriety or morality; they make no distinction between good and evil; they are completely selfish beings. But, be this as it may, I think our lives lack a kind of mystery that they must have had in the days when the two worlds existed side by side, when a fall of golden leaves might have become a sprinkling of fairy coins, or a chorus of crickets the sound of fairy fiddlers.

Yet, even now, in certain times and places the portals between this world and the other are still accessible. Quiet forests are such places. Halloween is one such time. Even the most unimaginative, work-a-day people are susceptible to enchantment in such times and places. (On Halloween, for example, the beautiful and terrifying Queen of Faery holds court for a surprising medley of ordinary folk.) Under their spell, our priorities fall into balance and our lives are suddenly full of promise.

However, we must leave the forest and go back to home and work, and Halloween comes but once a year. How can we hold onto that thrilling, anything-is-possible feeling we get when we find ourselves brushing against the boundary of faery? The answer to this question is as simple as opening a book.

Find at least an hour in every day to escape the mundane. Swim with selkes and mermaids. Rub Aladdin’s magic ring. Weave a spell with Prospero. Go into battle with King Arthur or Finn Mac Cumhal. Travel to the underworld with Orpheus. Journey to Mordor with Frodo and Sam. Dream with Ebenezer Scrooge. Myths, fairytales, and fantasy novels open magic doors that allow us to dwell amongst the Gentry without a lick of danger to our immortal souls. On the contrary, I believe that these respites from our daily world strengthen the soul, revive the intellect, nurture the spirit.

Notes from the NJEA Convention

2010-11-19T05:03:00.000-08:00

The SAI workshops at the NJEA Convention in Atlantic City went very well indeed. I presented a workshop on Storytelling in the ELL (English Language Learners) Classroom. I also participated in fellow Storytelling Arts Storyteller Paula Davidoff’s writing workshop (Learning to Write/Writing to Learn: Strategies for Assessment) and the writing and performance workshop (Building Community through Collaborative Writing and Performance) she presented with Carolyn Hunt.

Here’s an overview of what took place during my three-hour workshop...

Storytelling in the 21st Century

21st Century Skills

The theme of the convention was based on the new standards for learning in the 21^st Century. (www.21stcenturyskills.org ) Our proposals had to show how our work fulfills these standards. What is so interesting is how the skills apply to both student performance and to professional development. The standards expect teachers to become the models for their students’ learning.

learning and innovation skills

21^st century skills for learning and innovation are infused throughout the core standards and professional development standards. These learning and innovation skills speak generally to

Communication Skills
Social/Cross-Cultural Skills
Global Awareness Skills

Specifically, the skills focus on:

Creativity in thinking and devising collaborative situations
Critical thinking
Communicating clearly
Collaboration
Flexibility
Adaptability
Self-direction (even in collaboration)

THE ORAL ART OF STORYTELLING

If you’ve ever heard a story told you notice at once that the 21^st century skills are the foundation of storytelling. Listening to stories is a collaborative act between teller and listener. It is a creative act. When students and teachers learn to tell stories, they are applying and utilizing the 21^st Century skills in a real way.

ORAL LANGUAGE/COMMUNICATION

Beautiful and rich language is heard and used
Figurative language is heard and used
New vocabulary is heard and used in context
Questions are heard and formulated
Opinions are offered and supported

VOICE/CLEAR COMMUNICATION

Pacing leads to fluency
Pitch leads to understanding
Volume leads to clear communication

BODY AND FACIAL MOVEMENT/COMMUNICATION

Comprehension comes from gestures
Comprehension comes from facial expressions
Comprehension comes from body movement

ELEMENTS OF STORY

Story repertoire is developed
Story structure is heard naturally
Characters are explored.
Dialogue is heard naturally
Common conflicts which will be alluded to throughout life are discussed

CHARACTER EDUCATION

Stories illustrate respect
Stories illustrate perseverance
Stories illustrate honesty
Stories illustrate responsibility
Stories illustrate moral courage
Stories illustrate compassion

Discussion of the 21^st century skills and the oral art of storytelling was the foundation of the workshop. Stories were told and it became very clear how a storytelling experience -- both listening to stories and learning to tell stories -- offers unique support in the ELL classroom. Storytelling helps realize skills needed in the 21^st century.

Stories were then told as examples of how teachers can bring storytelling into their classroom. The skills of the 21^st century and the skills of storytelling were referenced throughout the workshop.

Teachers can learn to tell stories themselves
Teachers can work collaboratively with colleagues, students, parents, and members of the community to bring storytelling into their classrooms
Teachers can teach students to tell stories
Teachers can bring in professional storytellers
Teachers can bring stories from all cultures into their classrooms

Stories are a unique tool for teaching global awareness and illustrating how a student fits into the culture of the world community. The oral art of storytelling can create an interdisciplinary and collaborative learning environment in the classroom by relying on the cultural dimensions and life experiences of the wider educational community. Listening to and telling stories force us to think creatively and critically and to be flexible and adaptable in order to communicate clearly with others.

Classroom Talk

2010-10-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

I’m Paula Davidoff and I have a school story to tell.

Every Thursday evening, I co-direct a troupe of teenage girls who tell their own stories through writing and performance. The troupe is called Girls Surviving, a named coined by one of our first troupe members as a comment on the one-day-at-a-time nature of a girl’s journey into womanhood. In our weekly workshops, the girls listen to traditional stories, read poems and plays, and talk about their own life experiences as a prerequisite to writing an original, multi-genre performance piece which they present to a community audience.

We always begin each session with a ‘check in’ – a time for each person to catch the rest of the troupe up on what’s happened to her since our last meeting. This week, one of girls, I’ll call her Tanya, told a story about her ongoing persecution by a teacher. Before she could finish, two of the other girls who were in the same class interrupted her.

“You should just keep your mouth shut in that class, girl!” said one.

“I don’t know why you talk to Ms. (teacher) like that,” added the other.

As the girls began to discuss the incident, it seemed clear that Tanya’s perception of what was happening with the teacher was in conflict with the perceptions of her classmates. When we completed the check-in, my co-director, Carolyn Hunt, who is a skilled director of Playback Theater, suggested that the girls act out the scene between Tanya and the teacher. In accordance with Playback protocol, she asked Tanya to select actresses to represent herself, the teacher, and some other students in the class. Then, with Tanya’s help, Carolyn set up the scene and directed the actresses. As the scene played out, it became clear to the adults in the room that the real-life teacher had very little control of the class, that rather than being a model for how she wanted students to act, her behavior was a reaction to the way the students behaved. It seemed equally clear that the girls, those who had actually witnessed the events and those who had not, weren’t aware of this. The idea that an adult, especially one in a position of authority, might feel fragile or uncertain seemed alien to them. Tanya’s defensive and, frankly, obnoxious behavior toward the teacher was based on the assumption that the teacher was scheming to humiliate her when it seemed to us that the teacher was just trying to survive a class of bored and unruly students.

At this point, anyone reading this entry might comment extensively on what’s wrong with this classroom dynamic, including problems with the child’s home, the teacher’s training, and the school administration’s approach to discipline, but that’s not what I want to address. I want to think about communication, specifically communication in the classroom.

In many, if not most, of the communities in this country, our school populations have become more socially, ethnically, and economically diverse. This diversity is overlaid on the cultural differences we expect to find from one household to another, regardless of socio-economic status or ethnicity. These unique differences in our students, as well as the differences between students and teachers, create obstacles to communication. The obstacles may range from the obvious problems of the student who has the immense task of trying to communicate in a new language, to the hidden problems of the child who is trying to unravel the subtle differences between the expectations of his mother and his teacher. Students and teachers come to the classroom with widely different and disconnected bases of prior knowledge, as well as prejudices, fears, and misconceptions about each other that can make teaching and learning impossible. In order to engage in meaningful educational discourse, we need to find a non-threatening common ground for making the gaps in knowledge transparent, and for acknowledging and discussing fears and misconceptions. Storytelling can create this common ground, this “third space” to accommodate the culture of school and the diverse cultures of our homes and neighborhoods.

Storytelling offers an approach to text that is different from the more conventional classroom reading practices of silent reading, group reading, and teacher read-alouds. Like a read-aloud, storytelling is social, but because the teller is always in eye-contact with the audience, the interaction between the audience and the text is more immediate and intimate. Audience members respond to the teller’s facial expressions and gestures as well as to her words as she embodies characters, represents landscape, indicates the boundaries of the settings, and provides a visual association for the voice of the narrator. The audience reads the teller’s visual presentation as an integral part of the story’s meaning. These non-verbal indicators help to clarify meaning for students who may not know the meaning of a word or understand its connotation. They also add emotional resonance that aids comprehension.

The multi-modal aspect of storytelling bridges gaps in student knowledge as it sets parameters for acceptable verbal and non-verbal communication. The teller’s dynamic interaction with the audience lets her know immediately whether or not students are comprehending the text. When she sees a puzzled look, she can clarify for the listener on the spot, with a movement or reiteration. Because she is watching the students’ faces, she can also assess and monitor student engagement throughout the telling. The teacher-as-storyteller makes herself more accessible to students by stepping out of her teacher persona and embodying other, familiar characters: siblings, fools, and bullies; moms, queens, and witches; dads, kings, and giants. Children recognize the characters and events in stories and connect them to their own life experiences. In this way the stories provide the classroom community with common metaphors for the real conflicts and celebrations children experience, both in and out of school.

Stories lead to the kinds of conversations that engender learning because they give us glimpses into the inner and outer lives of people we, otherwise, see only in the context of the classroom. Stories lead to discussion by posing questions that leave children wondering. They also lead to other stories, the stories of the teacher’s and her students’ experiences. The information and insight we gain from these conversations reveal to us gaps in knowledge, make us aware of fears, and help us understand misconceptions, with respect to ourselves and our students.

It seems naïve to think that Tanya’s teacher could solve her classroom control problems by telling stories. After all, she has curriculum to cover, and she is, in fact, dealing with problems caused by ineffectual parenting, her own poor preparation, and unsupportive administration. However, she is also trying to teach a child whom she hasn’t made an effort to know. Tanya has been a strong, cooperative member of the Girls Surviving troupe for two years. She’s a risk taker, a problem solver, and a good collaborator. I doubt her teacher has ever seen that side of her. She probably has the same kind of misguided opinion about Tanya that Tanya has about her.

I think that sometimes we, as teachers, are so focused on covering curriculum that we spend our time in the classroom talking to students rather than with them. The irony, of course, is that it doesn’t matter how many pages we cover if students aren’t learning, and if students don’t find a reason to become engaged, can’t find some connection to the material or the presenter, they’re not learning. I think that finding time for telling and sharing stories, both personal and traditional, is an investment in student engagement. Stories can humanize the teacher in the eyes of his or her students. And, when we listen to our students’ stories, we began to learn what they know and how they see the world, a element crucial to our ability to teach them.

Teaching Moments

2010-10-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

In a folktale, when the son sets off on an adventure, his mother asks him, “Will you take a half loaf with my blessing, or a whole loaf with no blessing?” We, the reader or listener, know the right answer to this question, and if the son asks for the whole loaf, we know it means he has the wrong priorities, that he’s doomed to fail in his quest and, perhaps, come to some dreadful end. However, we may ask (and children often do ask), Why can’t he have both the blessing and the whole loaf? Or, why not simply bless him, hand him the half loaf, and send him on his way? Why does the mother make her son choose?

Folktales are full of such moments, those incidents that can stop our suspension of disbelief and make us wonder, why? or how? We accept without question the existence of magic rings and glass mountains, but our imaginations bulk at matter-of-fact questions like, Why can’t Snow White just take the dwarves’ advice? or, Why does Ashenputtel’s father allow his new wife to treat her so badly? I think that these moments in a story, the incidents we stop to question, are the story’s way of saying, There is something important here. When the story ends, come back and examine this place. You’ll learn something true here, something about yourself.

In recent days, we have been exposed to one of real life’s unfathomable moments, the suicide of a bright and talented young man; a death ostensibly caused by the sort of mean act we expect from the older brothers and evil stepsisters of fairytales, but that we find inexplicable when it is perpetrated by real life brothers and sisters. In the days following Tyler Clementi’s tragic death, I have heard people speculate on the social phenomena that may have encouraged the actions of his tormentors: social networking and the ease with which modern technology allows the spread of images and information; the religious and cultural roots of homophobia; the aura of unreality that Reality T.V. has lent to life’s most serious and intimate interactions. Some or all of these things, no doubt, were instrumental in forming the thought processes that resulted in the heinous acts of the two seemingly unexceptional teenagers who set off the string of events that ended in Tyler’s suicide, but they don’t really explain how these two children came to hurt a third child so deeply. The explanations also do not give us a hint about how we can protect our children from being the instigators or becoming the victims of thoughtless brutality.

Among all the speculation about blame, the question I do not hear being asked is, how can we protect our children from the evils they are bound to meet as life leads them further and further from our side? Is there any way we can prepare them to resist the temptations presented by their social environment, or help them develop the inner strength to fight despair when they’re hurt by the actions of others? How do we help our children develop the moral compass they will need to navigate life?

As a mother and a teacher, these are questions I have been thinking about for over thirty years. They are not the kinds of questions that have simple answers. We can’t protect our children from the vicissitudes of life. We can only try to prepare them to expect that life will not be easy and that it will demand sacrifices. I believe that stories, especially folktales and myths, are one tool we can use to arm our children against the difficulties they will face in their lives. These ancient stories teach by telling about life in all its patterns and possibilities. They teach that heroes don’t succeed at every task, that sometimes they make the same mistake over and over again, that they are humiliated by their rivals, and passed over when they are most deserving. The stories also teach that, whatever the consequences, if a man wishes to be happy, he must stand by what he knows is right. Like the son in the folktale, a hero will always be asked to make a choice, and the choice will usually involve some sort of sacrifice: the whole loaf or the half.

We know that the magic in stories is not real, but sometimes we forget that it is often true. The truth in folk and fairy tales transcends the facts of life. In the real world, we can’t fly by lacing on magic sandals, escape danger with the help of a magic cloak, or travel to the underworld to bring back a lost love. These are the actions of our dreams, of the intensely private world of our unconscious, the place where we store our magical gear, our wishing rings and cloaks of invisibility, and where we keep our own personal witches, faeries, and demons. It’s the realm that may hold the secrets to our happiness and stability, if we could only decipher the things that happen there. Folktales and myths give us access to the world of the unconscious in a more orderly and systematic way than do our dreams. Our examination of the puzzling moments in story can help us learn to protect ourselves and teach us to fight the forces of evil that would overcome our psyches.

When children hear the old stories, they instinctively know that the hero is a stand-in for themselves, and I believe that when they hear something in the story that speaks directly to them, it stops them long enough to make them wonder, Why? This is the teaching moment, the place in the story that will fortify the soul if the questioner stops to examine it. Sometimes the answers are hard, but if we take the time to help our children look for them, we help them build the moral foundation that will support them as they grow, help them make good decisions, and help fortify them against despair.

It’s not easy for parents to teach these hard lessons to our children, but I think it’s essential to their well being. The nymph, Thetis, tried to give her son, Achilles, both her blessing and the whole loaf. Knowing he was fated to die young, she tried to divert his fate with charms and tricks. In his infancy, she dipped him in the River Styx, making every part of his body except the eponymous tendon by which she held his tiny leg impenetrable by weapons. As he approached manhood, she tried to make him invisible to the kings who would take him to Troy by disguising him as a girl and placing him in the women’s quarters of King Lycomedes’s palace. Finally, realizing that she could no longer keep him from his final battle, she procured for him a wondrous shield made by the armorer of the gods, Hephaestus. An Immortal, herself, Thetis didn’t understand that the mortality from which she was trying to protect her son held the key to any possibility he had of happiness or peace of mind. She couldn’t protect him from death, but perhaps she could have taught him to value life. Perhaps she could have focused less on the vulnerability of his body and thought more about how to help him develop his qualities of soul. And when we read the story of her son’s last days in Homer’s Iliad, we realize how much he could have used that help.

I think there is little we can do to prevent our children's suffering. However, I think we can try to prepare them to expect that life will sometimes be sad and frightening, and to give them strategies for surviving those times. One of the ways to accomplish this is by telling and reading them stories in which heroes make choices, suffer the consequences, and learn to overcome. This is what the folktale mother knows. This is the story teaching us.

posted by Paula Davidoff

Paula Davidoff is a writer and storyteller who has been a teaching artist since 1994. In addition to her work with Storytelling Arts, she is the director of a storytelling-based literacy program in the Morristown, NJ and co-director, with playwright Carolyn Hunt, of Girls Surviving, a troupe of teen girls who tell their own stories through writing and performance.

Report from the 18th Annual NJ Storytelling Festival

2010-09-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

Yet another rainy festival. We should probably call it ‘festival weather’ at this point. Nonetheless, people showed up, tellers and listeners and all had a good, cozy time. As Carol Titus, current coordinator of the festival said, “We have no trouble in the rain, we’ve got it down pat at this point.” The rain held off enough for short walks around the beautiful Grounds For Sculpture.

The day started with a workshop for storytellers and teachers. Judy Freeman had us clapping, snapping singing and chanting. Perfect for a rainy Sunday morning. Judy Freeman is best known in New Jersey for her annual Winner’s Conferences she holds throughout NJ. At these well-attended conferences she calls out the top hundred children’s books published in that year. She gives quick book talks and demonstrates activities and suggests thematic ideas for the books.

The two-hour Storytelling Festival workshop had more of an emphasis on storytelling. Judy’s forte is the quick, snappy story that is perfect to use as fillers. These are stories in their own right. Peter and Iona Opie say that the nursery rhyme is the child’s first story. And just think of the journeys taken by Jack and Jill, and the mouse up the clock, and our own selves as we go to market to buy a fat pig.

Judy Freeman helped us all recall the old camp songs and risqué children’s’ chants we all told to each other, though never to our parents; songs and chants that are based on these older rhymes.

Then she ran through drawing stories, paper folding stories, finger plays and stories with puppets.

I am amazed at Judy Freeman’s generosity. She gave totally of herself darning the workshop. And we all went away with a handout of all of the stories she used. The pages of storytelling tips we received can also be found in her book, Once Upon a Time: Using Storytelling, Creative Drama, and Reader’s Theatre With Children in Grades Pre-K-6. It is a book worth looking into, full of tips and techniques for learning how to tell stories.

Her handout also included a list of Internet storytelling links that she developed with Carol Titus.

The rest of the day was filled with stories and song. We have such wonderful storytellers here in New Jersey. Many of you reading this blog will be familiar with what a festival atmosphere is like. We have four stages set up with four performances taking place at once. The audience is encouraged to dip into as many sessions as they wish. It is at a festival like this that we realize how many stories there are in the works, and how many different styles of storytelling there are as well.

But, the Festival is also a gathering where we as storytellers are able to meet together, hear each other’s new work and catch up on personal stories. It is in this way that we support each other refresh our commitment to the community of storytellers around the state and are nourished by wonderful stories.

My favorite spot is always the spot where the Storytelling Groups perform. For those of you reading who may not know, New Jersey has at least six storytelling groups representing all corners of the state. When the groups perform their ‘set’ at the Festival, three or more members take turns telling a story or two. We learn a bit about their group, what their meetings are like, what they do in their meetings, how often they meet, where else they may tell as a group, and who their members are. Usually the members telling are not professional free-lance tellers, but tell to their families, library classes, classrooms, church groups, and any other such gatherings. It is delightful to discover new storytellers and new approaches to storytelling. I think this year we were all impressed with the upcoming young teller Shifra Willick.

I would also like to say ‘hats off’ to Carol Titus for pulling the whole thing together this year. She had many to help and SAI was well represented on that front. It was great seeing you all there and hearing many of you tell. But, one idea I think Carol carried out on her own was the announcements to be made before each session. She covered every aspect of storytelling in New Jersey… the groups, events, the Internet and the Telebrations to be held around the state. It was such an easy, unobtrusive way to cover so much information. Go to www.njstorynet.org to see what she has developed.

Moral Play

2010-09-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

The best book about storytelling and playing with ideas that I’ve read this year is Big Ideas For Little Kids by Thomas Wartenberg. The subtitle is Teaching Philosophy Through Children’s Literature, and he runs a wonderful website www.philosophyforchildren.org I’m rereading the book right now in preparation for the upcoming school year.

I read about the book in the NY Times and received it as a gift for Mother’s Day. I devoured it that very day and put it into practice the very next day. The book is all about holding deep discussion with children after sharing picture books with them. Storytelling offers an even more immediate and intense philosophical experience. The old folktales and fairy tales and myths are full of inherent moral and ethical problems. The reason for their existence is to help us figure out life and to teach us ways of being in the world.

I was ready for this book. I have read widely and deeply on this issue of holding deep conversations with children. Vivian Paley is an inspiration. She truly listens to children and tries to figure out what they are really saying. As I reported last week, her many books have been invaluable. Robert Coles and his The Spiritual Life of Children and his The Moral Intelligence of Children helped me realize that very young children are dealing with very big issues. Children are trying to make sense of the world.

Back to Wartenberg. The first discussion Wartenberg reports is on wondering about bravery after reading a Frog and Toad story. (‘Dragons and Giants’ by Arnold Lobel) The day after I read this chapter I went into a third grade class to tell stories. I told the same stories I had planned to tell, but used the concept of bravery in the follow-up discussion. I told the story of Baba Yaga’s Black Geese (many versions exist), in the story a little girl is left in charge of her baby brother. Inadvertently she leaves the boy alone and Baba Yaga’s geese kidnap him. The little girl has to go and save the baby boy. She does so with the help of three animals.

Before the story I asked the students what they thought about bravery, how they might define it, what they thought it meant to be brave, and had they ever been brave. In the free wheeling discussion many points were made.

Being brave is when you’re never afraid.
No, being brave is when you are afraid but you do it anyway.
Being brave is when you don’t even think about it. You do something scary without even thinking about it. Like when a fireman saves someone. You just do it.
You have to do something for someone else.
Being brave is when everyone else can do something and you’re scared, but you do it anyway. A girl was uncomfortable with this and came back with the thought that maybe if the ‘others’ were doing something bad, then maybe it would be more brave NOT to do what everyone else was doing.

After I told the story we talked about bravery again. All the third graders thought the Little Girl was brave according to our definitions. It was very scary to go to Baba Yaga’s hut to save her brother, but she did it. However, new issues surrounding bravery came up because of the story.

During the discussion before the story, the students didn’t think you could be brave if someone helped you. After the story many changed their minds. But, there was a condition. “You have to listen to the help and follow what they say.” Well now, that’s interesting.
One girl said, “The girl was lucky that Baba Yaga was asleep.” This led to a discussion of whether luck has anything to do with being brave.
And then there is the whole problem of the little girl. She left her brother alone. That wasn’t very responsible. It was her fault the boy was taken. In part, she was trying to save her own skin. Is that considered being brave?

The ideas in this book resonate now with stories I learn. I just learned a delightful story of the Hodja and the Moon in the Well. I did not learn this story as an example of bravery, but now I see two more questions of bravery arise

Can you be brave if you do something you think is brave, but no one else thinks is brave?
Can you be brave if no one is there to witness it?

The New Jersey Storytelling Festival is being held this Sunday, September 12^th at The Grounds For Sculpture. (Find information at New Jersey Storytelling Network www.njstorynet.org . Or go directly to the Grounds For Sculpture website at www.groundsforsculpture.org.) I will be telling a whole program of stories about being brave. Maybe I’ll see you there.

The Importance of Play in Education

2010-09-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

It's September and schools are starting up. What are we thinking about? A friend sent me this article about the importance of play in education.

http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/Kindergarten_8-page_summary.pdf
The article deals with play in the early years, but I would like to broaden the discussion and think about the importance of play in the older grades, and in truth, even in ourselves. When our minds are at play is when the real learning takes place. Einstein played with numbers and thought pictures. It is said that Jacques Cousteau came up with the idea for the aqualung while playing.

You may be asking, “What does storytelling have to do with play?” I contend that stories are the foundation of play and that language is the vehicle of play. I believe this to be true when play takes place in the doll corner, or in a literature discussion group, or in a play writing or poetry writing session. Some of my colleagues can certainly add their own stories to that!

Research shows that children who engage in complex forms of socio-dramatic play have greater language skills than nonplayers, better social skills, more empathy, more imagination, and more of the subtle capacity to know what others mean. They are less aggressive and show more self-control and higher levels of thinking (see article above)

I have also been reading Vivian Paley’s book, A Child’s Work: the Importance of Fantasy Play.

…fantasy play is the glue that binds together all other pursuits, including the early teaching of reading and writing skills…. It is in the development of their themes and characters and plots that children explain their thinking and enable us to wonder who we might become as their teachers. If fantasy play provides the nourishing habitat for the growth of cognitive, narrative, and social connectivity in young children, then it is surely the staging area for our common enterprise: an early school experience that best represents the natural development of young children. (p.8)

Storytellers bring folk tales and fairy tales into the classroom in a unique way; different from books. Tellers and listeners alike engage differently with the oral story as opposed to the read story. The old folk literature deals with real developmental issues children are working through. And when children are given time to play, they are given time to play out their own interpretations. And as the children are reinterpreting the stories they are doing so in language.

Other studies have shown that by the age of three, many children of poverty are already behind in readiness for school, one big concern being little exposure to language.

They (the children) need a solid introduction to books, which most middle-class children have from infancy onwards, and they need to hear language used in conversation, storytelling, song, and verse. Equally important, they need to use language. Play is the foremost way that children use the language they are hearing. (Crisis in the Kindergarten, above)

Through this language play children are using rhymes, rhythm, metaphors, spells, new vocabulary and fresh concepts. They are learning to form and speak questions and opinions, and learning how to hold conversations. They are practicing oral language.

Think of the kindergarten child using ‘meadow’ in his play after hearing The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Or the fifth grader who ponders whether the idea of a magic potion gave a character ‘hope’ in The Tiger’s Whisker. When do we use such beautiful language in today’s world?

I have notebooks full of examples.

The girl who writes the following poem after hearing The Gunniwolf:

Brendan, Brendan,

Why for you move

The whole second grade class dancing in a Congo line to gym class chanting The Name of the Tree is Ungali!

Listening to a story together builds community. There is a shared story we can all reference in play. A friend, a Kindergarten teacher, tells a story.(I had told Tom Tit Tot in her classroom.) She reports, “I feel so badly. I always mix up Frankie’s name. I had his older brother and I keep mixing them up. I hate not remembering his name. But today, I just laughed with him when I made the mistake and said, “nimmy, nimmy, not your name is Frankie!” A shared story playfully eases the situation.

However, we as professional storytellers are not in the classrooms during creative play, whether discussion, poetry play, or block play. The professional teacher is the one who will take the shared oral texts and create an environment where creative language is allowed to flourish. This collaboration between two professionals bringing rich stories and language to students, laying the foundation for creative play, can’t be beat.

Next week I will be thinking about how storytelling encourages children to deal with deep, profound developmental issues.

Welcome to the Storytelling Arts Blog!

2010-02-22T13:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Storytelling Arts Blog. This space will be used to share news of our programs, information for teachers and other educational professionals, and discussions with our affiliated artists.

Senior research scientist turned award-winning author and storyteller Kendall Haven calls storytelling "an information delivery system powerhouse evolutionarily hardwired into human brains." Haven says: "Storytelling Arts programs have consistently had significant, positive impacts at all grade levels."

We hope you'll find this blog useful as a forum to discuss storytelling and its use as an educational tool.