I love my job, but there are
times when I feel like I’ve lost focus: I’ve grown too comfortable with my
repertoire; I’m using the same activities in every workshop; I get so invested
in a lesson plan that I can’t realize I should drop it when it’s not working. I
found myself in one of those slumps at the end of February or the beginning of
March and I couldn’t find my way out of it. So when I saw that Regina Ress was leading a workshop at my storytelling guild this month, I jumped on it.
I first heard Regina tell nearly
twenty years ago during a concert at a MidAtlantic Storytelling Conference. At
the time, I had been working as a teaching artist for only two or three years
and the MAST conference was my first experience of a big storytelling event. I
don’t remember who the keynote speaker was that year or which workshops I
attended, but I can close my eyes and see Regina moving across the stage as she
told a piece from the Dayak saga Adi,
Song of Agan. I can hear her voice change as she slips from narrator to
character. I can even remember what she was wearing. She is an extraordinary
storyteller. She is also an important storyteller. Her work is varied, broad,
and deep; and she does it all over the world.
Her workshop at the NJ Storytelling
Guild’s May meeting was entitled, Storytelling on the Moment, and it addressed the question of what we, as teachers and
artists, can do when we find ourselves on the coat tail of an event that has
caused an emotional upheaval in the community. One answer, of course, is that we
could teach the lesson or tell the stories we had
planned, knowing that sometimes offering the opportunity to escape into story
is the best gift we can give. But this was not the focus of Regina’s workshop.
Regina reminded us that our work
is cloaked in metaphor and, therefore, has the potential to help listeners
begin to navigate even the saddest or most frightening circumstances without forcing
them to directly address the real life source of their sorrow or fear. She told
us about the myths and folktales she has used when she found herself working in the midst of a crisis: teaching in a school near
ground zero in the days and weeks after 9/11; telling at a winter solstice
coffee shop gathering that happened to take place the day after the Sandy Hook Elementary
School murders, and telling at an urban playground a few hours after one of the
student counselors had gone missing. Her stories reminded us that we have in our own repertoires many tales that would be appropriate to offer at such times. We need only the presence of mind to realize that we're carrying the gift.
She conducted the workshop as a
conversation between herself and the participants, telling stories that
illuminated important points in the discussion. In other words, she modeled the
lesson she had brought us, illustrating how metaphor, through story, helps
clarify and organize the things we know but may not be able to say; how it
speaks volumes in just a few words; and how it sprinkles light into darkness so
we can begin to find our way.
I left Regina’s workshop uplifted,
with renewed enthusiasm for my work. A reminder that good teachers have the
power.
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