Fifth Graders Working With Ravens

 - Julie Della Torre, Storyteller

The strongest work we as storytellers do in the classroom, the work that has the most impact on students is when the teacher and the storyteller work collaboratively--two professionals working together, a professional storyteller and a professional teacher--each bringing unique skills to the project.

The professional storyteller does the work of learning her/his story in-depth.  The storyteller researches and finds the story, learns the text, analyzes the story, and studies the culture from which the story emerges. She/he understands different types of stories from the folklore genre.

The professional teacher knows her/his students.  She/he is eminently familiar with grade curriculum and the skills students need in their classroom.

By telling stories and leading literary discussions of the stories, the storytelling gives a class an oral text from which to work on all types of curriculum. We storytellers hope that teachers learn from our tellings and from the follow-up discussions and activities. In truth, we storytellers, if we take time to listen to teachers, learn much more.

I was the storyteller for a Storytelling Arts residency in a middle school in Paterson, New Jersey.  As part of the residency I told stories to the 5^th and 7^th grades and facilitated follow- up discussions.

The goals for the project were to

·         Increase students' awareness, comprehension, and appreciation of literature.

·         Improve listening skills.

·         Stimulate students' imaginations.

·         Help students' to have a more intuitive understanding of story structure which will carry over into their writing skills.

·         Reinforce teachers' understanding that the ancient art of storytelling can serve and integral role in the school curriculum

·         Increase students' awareness, comprehension, and appreciation that stories are the world’s culture

 But as you will see below, the fifth grade teacher, Ms. Kober, went far beyond these goals. It was the second year for me in her classroom.  I told the story ‘The Seven Ravens’ from the Brothers Grimm. Ms. Kober spoke of her experience with storytelling. She said, “Last year I didn’t know what to expect, but now I know what I can do with it (storytelling). It’s great when you come in because I’m not a good storyteller. I can’t do it. So it’s great to have you and then I can take it from there.”

And she did! After hearing the story, she had the students do all sorts of reading and writing.

Ms. Kober went on, “All of the skills you see are prior skills. This was just a great way to review. They loved it. I was amazed that they could sequence the story after just hearing it once. And they could read and follow the directions to make origami ravens. That’s reading informational text.”

Take a look at the writing assignments her students completed and what a beautiful bulletin board it made for showing off their work.

 

 

 

 

 

Truth in "Lies"

Last week I told stories for nine groups of first graders: one in which a tortoise rides on eagle’s back, one in which a strange visitor arrives one body part at a time, one in which a wolf demands that a little girl sing to him, another in which a man’s doctor is none other than a python.  Midway through the second day, I realized I had not yet heard that oft-asked question, “Is that true?”

 

These six and seven-year olds seemed entirely comfortable in the imaginative world of folk and fairy tale, where every story is really a story about the human condition, providing metaphors which do not have to be analyzed in order to be useful.  They seemed to intuit that these traditional tales contain truth even if the events never happened.

 

As teachers and parents we want our children to value honesty and to be able to live in the everyday world where we cannot count on physical magic, understand the language of the animals, or witness a giant pumpkin’s sky-born seeds turning into stars.

 

Perhaps it was partly this desire to prepare children for “the real world” that was behind one teacher’s consternation when a boy in her class told me that his father had gone to a skeleton doctor (not an orthopedist, but a doctor that was a skeleton) and got better.  “I forgot to tell you,” she quietly told me as I left the room,  “He is always lying.  He’s been referred to counseling.”  Her concern for her student was palpable.

 

In the days since that session, I have found myself trying to “unpack” this brief episode.  Many of us often feel the need to soften or stretch the truth, and we sometimes to go even further in both our discourses with others and our internal conversations.  The stories told by this little boy, new to both the school and the community, may come from his need to be acknowledged and to fit in. 

 

For me, his claims certainly confirmed that he had absorbed the story I’d just told, a folk tale from Zimbabwe called “Nyangara, the Python.”  In the tale, a group of brave children accomplish a task from which the men of the village flee.  They carry a chief’s doctor, a huge snake, down from his mountain cave and the very ill chief, gently tended by Nyangara, immediately regains his strength.

 

Coming to this story as an adult, I have always focused on the irrepressible innocent courage of the children, rather than on the magical powers of the snake.  But I am guessing that the boy who spoke of the skeleton doctor was hearing something very important about a child/father relationship.  In the tale, the chief refers to all of the kids as “my children” and prepares a great feast for them because they were able to do what the men were too frightened to do.  It is clear that the children save the man’s life.

 

Though I know nothing of this student’s family, I do know how it feels to be able to make an ailing parent feel better.   I vividly remember the months before my own father had the back surgery he so needed.  I was seven, the oldest of five, living on a busy dairy farm.  In school, I was a rather timid second grader.  At home, I was the capable one who could feed and dress my baby twin sisters while my mother was out in the barn or keep my two other sisters occupied by reading to them.  Nothing, however, made me feel as useful and as important as giving my dad a back rub.  “Press hard,” he’d say as I leaned into the tight muscles along his spine.  “That’s right.  That helps.”  

 

Now my father is 87. His heart is failing, his memory in shambles.  Sometimes, instead of dutifully working on his checkbook or cleaning his kitchen, I tell him a story I’m working on.  He is an attentive listener, still a thoughtful man, one who appreciates the truths wrapped up in the “lies” of the story.  I am grateful.

 

LURAY GROSS works extensively in schools and the community presenting workshops and performances for all ages. She is a believer in the power of stories and poems as resources nurturing heart, mind, and spirit. Under the auspices of Storytelling Arts, Inc., she brings multicultural folktales into the classroom and facilitates response and elaboration, particularly through writing. Her own love of the spoken and written word, of the outdoors, and of music were all nurtured by her experiences growing up on a busy dairy farm in Pennsylvania.

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.

Watching Snow White by Storyteller Julie Della Torre

 

There was no escaping Snow White in early 2012. At least two feature films were made of her, and made with big box office stars. So I took my adult daughter to Snow White and the Huntsman, and then borrowed a number of Snow White films from the library and sat down to watch.

Since  reading an article “Creating Variants With Illustrations” by Patricia Cianciolo (Blatt: Once Upon a Folktale), I’ve been studying picture book versions of stories I tell and noticing how the stories are informed by choices the illustrators make.  Different scene choices, styles, and character illustrations make their own variants of the story. As a storyteller, I have also been working with the Snow White story and its many print variants. I decided to explore this same concept of variants through film by watching films with an eye to specific choices made by script writers and directors. Here are some discoveries I made. Please note that my discussion of the movies will not be focused on the actors’ performances, the quality of the film or the director. I will not recommend, nor will I dismiss the films. These notes are not film reviews.

What I watched (Though I watched many more films, these are the ones I would like to discuss)

·         Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) with Charlize Theron as the Queen and Kristen Stewart as Snow White

·         Mirror, Mirror (2012) with Julia Roberts as the Queen and  Lily Collins as Snow White

·         Willa: An American Snow White (a Tom Davenport film  1998) with Caitlin O’Connell  as the Stepmother and Becky Stark as  Willa (Snow White)

·         Snow White episode in Fairie Tale Theater (Shelly Duvall 1984  ) with Vanessa Redgrave as the Queen and Elizabeth McGovern as Snow White

·         Snow White, Fairest of Them All (made for TV 2001) with Miranda Richardson as the Queen and Kristen Kruek as Snow White

What makes Snow White Snow White? What needs to be included so that we know the tale is a Snow White tale?

·         an evil, beautiful stepmother
·          enchanted woods
·          a particular season
·          dwarves
·          a mirror
·          a huntsman
·          a prince
·          magic killing objects
·         coffin, sleep
·          and of course, Snow White

I’ll concentrate on only a few of these.

WOODS AND SEASON

Snow White is a tale of winter and return of spring. Willa is set in the southern part of the United States. No winter here, but all the other films have scenes of cold winter, ice and frozen lands. Sometimes winter is just mentioned at the beginning… three drops of blood on the snow. Sometimes just including an animal associated with winter is enough. Interesting in Fairest of Them All that the film starts with apple blossoms falling like snow. Father wishes for a daughter with skin as white as snow, etc. There is snow throughout this movie. The enchanted forest in Mirror, Mirror is blanketed with snow.

Going over and into the enchanted woods is a part of all of the movies. The woods Barker goes through in Willa are realistic, but scary woods. The time she spends with the ‘dwarves’ is on the road in a traveling medicine show. Duvall’s woods are supposed to be just realistic woods. The others are truly magical. We know we are in an enchanted place. In Huntsman and Fairest we are transported to these woods with sweeping aerial views.

EVIL STEPMOTHER

Be she Queen or not, all the stories have a beautiful, evil stepmother. It’s a wonder that the title is Snow White since the strongest character is really that evil Queen. What’s motivating this stepmother? Choices made by scriptwriter and director give different impressions. In Huntsman and Fairest of them All, the Queen is surely beautiful, but more than vain, she is power hungry. Theron wants to rule the kingdom and live forever. She doesn’t just need to see Snow White dead; she needs to eat the girl’s heart. Richardson does eat the girl’s heart… or so she is led to believe. The message here is beauty equals power. Julia Roberts also wants to rule the kingdom, but more than craving power, this Queen is vain and terrified of aging. She can’t bear to see the daughter, young and beautiful. Redgrave is only concerned with beauty and age. O’Connell (an aging actress, not a Queen) is obsessed with aging and a fading theatrical career soon to be usurped by her beautiful stepdaughter.

Watching these women lose control and come unraveled was quite intriguing. Redgrave does it just with her hair. The more her hair is out of control, the more crazed she becomes twirling madly to her death at the end.  Only in Willa does the Evil Stepmother meet her demise by fire.

Some of the films bring in mythological allusions. In Mirror, Mirror and Fairest of Them All, there are explicit references to the moon goddesses through use of jewelry and moons. And peacock feathers can be found in Disney’s queen and on Julia Roberts. Is that mythological?

THE MIRROR

The mirrors were the most fun to study-- some fantastic mirrors and what a different message the physical properties of the mirror send. First of all, who or what does the stepmother see when she looks into it? Who or what responds? Do the mirrors have any other magical powers? In Huntsman and Duval’s Snow White the face/voice of the mirror is a man. In Duval’s the mirror is Vincent Price and is the narrator of the story, holding conversations with the Queen: a mirror with attitude. In Willa, the mirror is a vanity table mirror that reflects the stepmother’s last performance of Romeo and Juliet with all of the ovations she received clearly audible. Apparently, all mirrors are dangerous to her for all are covered throughout the house or locked up in drawers. In Mirror, Mirror, Julia Roberts walks into the mirror (like Alice?) and sees her beautiful self-reflected. She also holds conversations with the mirror (herself): another mirror with attitude.

I thought the Huntsman mirror was the most arresting. (you can see it here YouTube) Then I saw the mirror in Fairest of them All. The concept for this mirror outdid the rest. It’s a bit complicated. The Queen is ugly at the beginning of the movie. She is given an evil mirror which she breaks because she is afraid to see her reflection. A piece of it flies into the eye of the King. (Anderson’s Snow Queen?) He sees her as beautiful and he is now in her power.  But one bigger piece remains and it is placed on a special stand in a special room. This room is a dressing room and the mirror is a dressing room mirror, the kind where you see your full self-reflected on and on and on. I had done some study on labyrinths and one labyrinth is just such a mirror. You can lose yourself in a mirror like this. Very fitting. Richardson sees her whole self-reflected until Snow White becomes more beautiful and from then on Snow White reaches out from every mirror and answers “Who is the fairest of them all?” with “I am, I am, I am…” The remaining piece of mirror has other powers as well. It can show the Queen exactly where Snow White is. (I remember this quality in some other films as well) It can transport the Queen when she steps into it. It can transform the Queen once, to look like Snow White’s mother.  It is the weapon used to kill the huntsman. Quite a powerful mirror indeed.

Some other things I noticed and found intriguing

The sashes in Duvall’s piece and in Fairest of Them All were worth noting. Vanessa Redgrave’s beribboned crone twirls around making those beautiful ribbons impossible to resist. And the magical sash in Fairest quickly turns from a pretty, tied bow to a suffocating knot.

Puppets played prominently in Mirror, Mirror and in Willa.  Both movies start with puppets. The beginning of the tale is told through puppets in Mirror, Mirror. Later Julia Roberts is able to destroy the dwarves’ house by manipulating puppets. Willa opens with Willa (Snow White) playing out a fairy tale with her little puppet theatre. Learning of her stepdaughter’s interest in theatre, the stepmother is enraged when she finds this puppet theatre.  The whole of Willa is about acting and theatre.

I was fascinated to find a Betty Boop cartoon (1933) of Snow White on YouTube. It is of its time, but it does include many of the attributes of Snow White discussed above. Watch and notice the Evil Queen, the mirror, snow, the huntsman (prince?) the ice casket and the demise of the queen.  (Betty Boop 1933 Cab Calloway "Snow-White" on YouTube - Betty Boop)

Julie has been telling traditional and literary fairytales to audiences of all ages since 1985. Her nine years of elementary school teaching and her study of child development and curriculum have made Julie finely attuned to stories that are age appropriate. Julie says, “My background in education helps me to choose stories that are appropriate to students’ developmental levels. The myths and folktales which I tell are filled with ethical dilemmas which provide a catalyst for deep discussion and reflection. For this reason I prefer classroom telling.” 

 

 

 

“I’m shocked by how much J____ remembers and how much he had to say,” Ms. D____ quietly tells me as I put the cloth carrot and two small stones back into my storytelling sack, then turn to give her first graders a cheery good-bye.

They have been sitting crisscross applesauce style in the carpeted corner of the classroom for an hour, not counting the stretch and breathe break we took halfway through. I can simply see how their capacity for listening and reflecting is growing.

This is day three of a seven-day storytelling residency at the Florence L. Walther School in Lumberton, NJ, where I have been working with eight groups of first graders and their topnotch teachers. Designed to support the language arts curriculum and to further the goals of community building, this brief residency brought me to each class for three hour-long sessions, one in the fall, one this past week, with another scheduled for April. A two-hour teacher workshop in December focused on engaging students in responding to and extending the stories they hear and read through movement, conversation, and retelling.

This is year two for the residency. Last year I also worked with the first grade staff and students, presenting an October teacher workshop on learning to tell stories. That year, each teacher added at least one story to her teller repertoire and told it before my winter visit. With great delight, the students told me about the stories their own teachers had told. And they remembered them, replete with details. The value of the Walther residency has been due, to a great extent, to the way in which Principal Janet Horan and her entire staff have embraced the process and integrated story into their work.

The immediacy and intimacy of eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart communication of storytelling provides a subtle, yet powerful, contrast to reading silently or even aloud. Caught up in the rhythms and music of the language, and physical presence of the teller’s gesture, posture, and facial expression, the listener takes the story directly into his or her mind. Each student in the classroom creates the story along with the teller, feeling its structure, getting to know the characters and imagining the scenes. Story recall, as in the case of young J. is heightened.

I believe, however, that there are even greater advantages to this ancient and always fresh art. When stories are told, a profound gift exchange is taking place. The teller offers, not only the story itself, but perhaps more important, her whole attention to those who receive the story. Without altering the essential lineaments of the tale, she improvises, responding to raised hands or quizzical looks, incorporating suggestions or gestures and dialogue suggested by the listeners. The story becomes a living thing, nurtured by both teller and listener. No wonder a six- year old or 16-year old or sixty-year old recalls with delight the trick fox played or the way a silly boy found his courage when he had to deal with the ugly troll hag on his own.

This is the kind of gift that allows a boy like J, whose expressive language has been so limited that he is being referred for testing, to find his voice. It is a gift that teachers, as well as professional storytellers can amply offer to their students and to each other.

Luray Gross, Storyteller

Moral Play

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 www.storytellingarts.net

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

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 www.storytellingarts.net

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.