As the year draws to its close, I have been thinking a lot about
journeys. Paula Davidoff and I have been
creating an extraordinary program at Passaic Valley High School where the
Superintendent of Schools, Joanne Cardillo, has asked us to mentor a select
group of teachers in the use of storytelling in the classroom. Our classes include Public Speaking, English
Literature, Children’s Literature, and Identity in Literature Our stories range from Speak, a young adult novel about
sexual abuse, to Antigone, to Little Red Riding Hood.
Decades ago, Joseph Campbell popularized the interpretation of
stories as a universal hero’s journey - birth, life, death and rebirth -
forming an endless cycle reflecting the course of our lives. Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson
and Magnus Chase series, is the latest author to contemporize this concept into
accessible adventures. In the classroom,
I have been reverting to folktales and personal story to illustrate that
stories are not about what was, but what is.
Even at Halloween, I could tell the personal story of a ghost who
appeared to me, evoking the most wonderful question a storyteller can hear,
“Did that really happen?” A story
wouldn’t be told if it weren’t true. All
of us have faced a monster and been devoured whether by a stupid choice, a
bully, or a final exam. Yet, we do go on
- wiser and stronger if we can take inspiration from the fools and heroes whose
stories are a part of our human inheritance.
When we build curricula, we are not dramatizing the information
which is already in the literature and text books; rather, we should be
creating the portal through which the student goes Aha! and makes the
connection for him/herself. We are teaching
a way to interpret the world through parallel and symbolic thinking rather than
literal recitation oƒ facts. The common
trend is to teach that there is a right way.
The storyteller's way is to teach that the path takes twists and turns,
and the lesson is not to get lost, but to discover and renew.
High school students in 2017 present challenges. Tied to their digital instruments, they see
the world within a small circle of communication, the triumph of the sound
bite. Discussing Antigone, I told the
story of Sojourner Truth and her famous Ain’t I A Woman speech. How is a black woman in 1848 like an ancient
Greek princess, I asked? A stunned
silence. The journey had to take us to
the realization that the human struggle for dignity and justice is age old and
as relevant today as it ever was. A
story from Yaffa Eliach’s Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust reinforced that
we must all hold on to each other to rise above the monsters that wait to
destroy.
As someone who has defined himself as a storyteller over four
decades, I have often thought back to the stories that set me on my
course. When I was in sixth grade, my
teacher, Mr. Reed, had newly arrived from England and was shocked that we
didn’t know such classics as Winnie the Poo and Charlotte’s Web. So, every day he would read to us. The magic of great words and simple truths
was laid before us as lessons as we moved into adolescence. So it is with this year at Passaic
Valley. I hope that the stories I tell,
the words and rhythms I create, and the parallels we make to now, and then, and
ever, will be more than an educational tool, but, in the full sense of
education, a step forward on our students’ journey into their future.
