Follow Up: Teachers Reflect on Their Experiences

About three weeks ago, Julie and I were finally able to schedule the final workshop with the teachers we have been mentoring since December. This workshop was postponed for over a month because of weather and other scheduling problems in the school. When we came together, teachers were clearly enjoying their down time, talking about personal issues, illnesses, car trouble, etc. It reminded me of the very first workshop we taught at the school, except with no teacher nerves. Everyone seemed relaxed. We began by asking teachers if there had been any connection to the storytelling lessons since our last student workshops. SM, the fifth grade social studies teacher, said that she is currently teaching about slavery and the Underground Railroad and her students continuously refer to The People Could Fly. DM, the 5^th grade ELA teacher, said that she thinks her students are more aware of descriptive language in everything the read and write. Other teachers commented on positive changes in their students that they attribute to the Storytelling Program. Many of them also mentioned that they believed they had changed as a result of their storytelling experiences.

After the discussion, Julie and I did some storytelling. I told The Three Languages and Julie told Juan Bobo and the Pig. These stories, as we hoped they would, invoked a discussion about learning styles and the fact that students who don’t excel academically are usually capable of learning and, even, excelling in other areas.

Next, we asked teachers to write a detailed assessment of the program. What follows are some excerpts from my teachers’ assessments.

SP (Special Ed, push-in support in Grade 6 ELA)

Storytelling Arts – or how I learned to get over myself and bring whimsy and critical thinking to my classroom. I wasn’t sure what to make of a workshop called “Storytelling Arts” and I wasn’t sure if it would really apply to the older grades. I was sure that I would never be able to do it, myself. I have avoided the stage since I bombed that drama audition my freshman year in high school…

The biggest surprise – no, relief – was how these two great storytellers managed to create a safe space and encouraging environment that allayed my stage fright and made me feel comfortable in taking on the storyteller role myself… I appreciated the careful progression of support, how the steps of the workshop unfolded slowly and with a great deal of encouragement and support with helpful feedback. I did not think I could do this, but I’m now actually excited to try it in other classes.

The students in my class were challenging listeners and have difficulty focusing, even for Storytelling Arts, but they really seemed to enjoy having the stories and responding to them. They could hardly wait to talk about the various story elements and to make connections to their lives and stories and movies they know. When there was a comprehension issue in storytelling, questions could be addressed immediately. There is no flipping back to page 82 or rewinding a video or audio, and the story action could be rephrased immediately. The story is dynamic, no static.

A surprising and exciting development was how, unprompted, some of the students became storytellers, themselves. They wanted to share narratives or anecdotes, even students who are shy and/or reluctant writers wanted to share something. It also provides an outlet for outgoing, “look at me” students.

MW (Grade 6 ELA)

The Storytelling Arts program has brought joy to my LAL classroom in several ways. My students have voiced individual feelings in a warm and caring environment, enjoyed mesmerizing stories told by Paula and myself, and showed pride in making connections with their new found knowledge. The ability to “hear” each child’s voice and to address everyone’s needs in an accountable talk wrap-up was a valuable time to learn about each other, as well as hone communication skills. The stories we told were a part of a larger thematic unit and students’ knowledge was apparent as the unit progressed.

Students were constantly writing and speaking about the universal themes in our Dream/Sleep unit. I found it interesting that words and phrases which were only used during oral time, later appeared in students’ writing.

I now tell stories with ease, almost daily. I feel comfortable telling a short, symbolic tale to start off a lesson and my students love to hear me tell them.

SM (Grade 5 Social Studies)

I was pleasantly surprised by how much the students learned through storytelling… Through storytelling, we were able to connect it to what we were learning in Social Studies. It is a way for the students to be able to visualize examples of what was going on during the times of slavery. For example, the story, The People Could Fly, helped students get an idea of how slaves were treated. It also helped them to hear figurative language, use context clues, and determine the meaning of phrases. I thought it was wonderful how one story could cover many aspects of learning.

Not only is storytelling a great way to connect content, but it also helped with teaching the students about being good and doing good for others. This is so important with students at this age and teaching them through storytelling helps them to remember and apply it into their everyday lives.

DM (Grade 5 ELA)

The Storytelling Arts program opens a door to learning that benefit the students in several ways. It helps them improve their listening skills, it allows them to build visualization skills, and it encourages creative thinking. All of these aspects of learning are extremely important in the development of well-rounded children.

As the storytelling program began, I admit I was skeptical as to the success of its implementation. Many of the children find it difficult to listen for any length of time, so how would they react when asked to sit still and absorb a story? I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that the kid who usually have the worst time with these activities paid the most attention to the stories, and easily remembered the details and concepts from the narrative! I will definitely use storytelling in my curriculum to improve listening skills.

Also I found that the students had an easier time visualizing aspects of the stories they heard when compared to just reading text. They remembered details and important content without much reinforcement. Finally, I was most encouraged by how much my children’s’ creativity was enhanced by the stories. They were eager to include similar elements and details in their own writing and they were more confident in their own storytelling.

EZ (resource, special education in grades 4 and 5 ELA)

Storytelling was a magical experience for me, both as a listener and a teller. It has touched my inner spirit and has led me on a path toward something I may want to do in the future as I venture towards retirement from thirty-four years of teaching. As a listener, I was impressed by how engaging the stories were… I was skeptical that students would relate to stories or find them “hokey.” Their receptive engagement, however, was heart warming. It seems they were even better engaged when the stories were told to them rather than read aloud. (As a support teacher, I do a lot of reading of the passages aloud.

The lessons that correlated with the stories were amazing. Writing a “stop action” description piece really helped the students with writing descriptively, with rich details that gave a clearer picture of the tale.

Teachers also made suggestions for improving the program

SP: In retrospect, if I could ask for anything more, I think I would, perhaps, have only requested a packet. Perhaps it is ironic that I am asking for print … but I sometimes regretted the quality of my own notes and could no find the title of the story, book, or resource I remembered mentioned.

SM: The only criticism I have is the way it ended. I felt there was not an exact closure for the students… a small project, or if they could create or learn a story to tell to the class groups.         

DM: There is one aspect of the program I would change and that is having the (teacher) workshop sessions scheduled during class time. Although I thoroughly enjoyed those meetings, the disruption to the classes I teach was a major challenge to address. Overall, I would recommend this program because I believe the benefits far outweigh the scheduling issues. When my most reluctant learners are excited about language arts, then I know my time is invested well.

We ended the workshop with stories about storytelling. Although this was our last teacher workshop of the year, it was not the program’s culminating event. That will take place in June when these focus teachers present ‘fishbowl’ sessions in which their peers will observe as they model storytelling lessons with their students. We are also in the process of planning a follow-up program for next year.

Making Time for Success

     

 

Illustration by A.B. Frost

When I walked into the fifth grade classroom on January 16^th, the students cheered, “Yay, we have storytelling!” They were not mistaken. There was going to be storytelling in their class that period but, although I had been their storyteller for over a month, I would not be telling. I took an audience seat at the back of the room to listen as their English Language Arts teacher took the stage to perform a rollicking interpretation of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. No one who walked into the room during that telling would have guessed that the woman in front of the class was not the professional storyteller. She moved naturally in the tale, changing posture and voice to create characters, and building the story landscape with a turn of her head or a sweep of her arm. The performance was flawless.

And it didn’t end with the story. After receiving accolades from her class, the teacher began the lesson she had designed to follow the telling, a lesson that incorporated aspects of the fifth grade literature, writing, and social studies curricula. Students discussed the story with their teacher, and then with each other in small groups. Each group talked and wrote about some aspect of the story. How did the story motifs and archetypes compare or contrast to those in other Trickster tales? Why was Trickster such an important character in African American slave stories? What is Trickster’s power?

During the next period of the day, a sixth grade history teacher leaned comfortably against her desk to tell her students the myth of Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the Underworld. Her movements were sparse, her voice expressive, but calm. Her style of telling was completely different but that of her fifth grade colleague, but again, the telling was flawless. Students sat motionless. Every eye was on their teacher teller. At the terrifying climax of the tale, it seemed as if every breath was suspended, then exhaled in concert as Sedna settled at the bottom of the sea to rule her new kingdom. This lesson also ended with an activity that was designed to both extend the story and address the teacher’s other instructional objectives.

Similar scenes were played out that day in kindergarten and fourth grade classrooms where teachers were using oral storytelling to enrich student learning. The lessons were part of a project funded by the Countess Moira Foundation and designed and implemented by Storytelling Arts artists. In early December, Julie Dellatorre and I began teaching and mentoring a group of elementary school teachers who had been selected by their principal to pilot a program designed to teach them to use oral storytelling and traditional tales to deepen student learning.

On the day we first met them, some of these teachers were apprehensive about the amount of time the project might take from their other teaching responsibilities. We assured them that they would be able to use what we were teaching to help them meet their instructional objectives, and then we told them stories. Julie began with Young Kate by Eleanor Farjeon. When the story ended, there was a moment of silence followed by a rush of conversation. The teachers were hooked. As the project progressed, their enthusiasm did not wane. They learned to tell stories, selected stories, and embedded storytelling in their lesson plans. For me, the project produced a perfect collaboration between teaching artist and classroom teachers. We taught and learned from each other and, as in all good collaborations, the whole was much more than the parts. I found myself delving more deeply into the stories I was researching and learning. The experience has improved my own telling in all of the workshops I’ve been teaching this winter.

So, what made this project work? I have been involved in many residencies that were designed and taught by good teachers and artists, and although they have all been successful on some level, I don’t think that they have given me the sense of accomplishment I feel in this project. That’s not to say we haven’t had faced obstacles. The project site shares the problems of many urban schools: low student performance, conflicting and confusing top-down mandates to building administrators and teachers, and the ever-present pressure imposed by the status of standardized student assessments. Then there was the weather. Most of our workshops were scheduled during the deep freeze that has ushered in this new year. Two or three days were postponed because of snow, and because of this, the two culminating events of the project have yet to be rescheduled. But in spite of these frustrations, my spirits are high.

I think that the two most important factor in this project’s success were the understanding of our funders that successful arts education programs take time, and the willingness of the school administrator to arrange a schedule that gave us adequate time for teacher education in and out of the classroom. The main goal of this project was professional development: giving teachers the skills necessary to be successful teacher tellers. To accomplish this, we planned teacher workshops at the beginning, middle, and end of the residency. In between teacher workshops, Julie and I worked with the teachers for fifteen days in their classrooms. Teacher workshops and classroom lessons were designed to scaffold teacher education. In the first five student workshops, Julie and I modeled our craft, in the second five, we collaborated with teachers to plan and implement workshops, and in the last five, classroom teachers did most of the telling and all of the planning. The final – yet to be accomplished – activity will be a day of fishbowl lessons modeled by our focus teachers for their colleagues who were not involved in the project. The model lessons will be supplemented by a professional development workshop taught by Storytelling Arts artists, Julie Pasqual and Gerald Fierst.

Although the two factors mentioned above may be most important in this project’s success, there are other things that made it strong. They are, in two words, collaboration and communication: involvement of more than one artist and collaboration between teaching artists through every stage of the process, from initial planning to the final assessment; ongoing communication between the arts organization administrator, the school administrator, and the artists; thoughtful selection of participating teachers by the school administrator; and true collaboration between classroom teachers and teaching artists.  

Also, the ultimate success of a project like this takes years. During this first year, Julie and I have learned things about the school culture that will help us improve a second year program. Then, as every storyteller knows, it takes three times to get it perfect. I have my fingers crossed.

No-Imaginationitis - An Epidemic Sweeping the Nation

          In the world of clown, literal thinking is funny.  You tell a clown to duck, and they start quacking, you say, “Split!”, and they try to do one;  and we all know what happens when the words “walk this way” are used.  Comedy like that plays on the fact that there are subtleties, that there can be more than just one meaning to a word or an expression, and that sometimes a phrase can have a connotation that seemingly has no relationship to the actual words used.  How many of us have actually been in a ship, much less with someone else, and yet say, “I’m in the same boat.”  The words and phrases are a stand in for something else, symbols that our minds de-code and then understand. 

          Sounds complex - this “decoding”, doesn’t it?  So how do those of us who don’t work in the military cipher division figure this stuff out?  The imagination.  That lovely little (or hopefully, not so little)e part of our mind that sees between the lines, interprets that there’s more than black and white, and creates what is not literally there.  We all have them, but just like some of us have not been acquainted with our psoas muscle in a while (it’s the BIG muscle that wraps around from your lower back, into your groin, and connects the top of you to the bottom half of you, and is used in every step you take), they are woefully under used.  And like a muscle which is not worked out, the imagination can wither.

          I wish I could say that I see this withering only in adults, but sadly, what moves me to write about this now is that I have seen it at younger and younger ages.  Just today, I saw a child of seven or so not able to pretend to be ANYTHING they wanted.  More, and more, I see a sort of deadness of the imagination, that makes me want to jump inside their brains and paint messy, out of the line pictures, OR dress up like a loin and ROAR!!!!  What frightens me is not that, “Gee, this kid is never going to be able to imagine enough to be in their school play, or write a short story for a homework assignment.”  It’s that without the ability to see more than what is evident and literal; these kids grow up missing so much of life. To quote the Little Prince “That which is essential is invisible to the eye.”  To not be able to take the folktales that the ancients have blessed us with, and think just because they may not be “true”, makes them less real is a – and I know I’m using a heavy word for this, but I feel it – TRAGEDY!

          In our work at the Morristown Juvenile Detention Center and Shelter, we four storytellers, see it over and over again.   We watch these young people listen to our tales, with more attention that I get any place else I perform – and that is no lie – but they are unable to understand that while there may not be a real mystical tree, or demon with ten heads, or a place where people’s wishes come true, it doesn’t mean that these stories have nothing to do with their lives.  Time and time again, we are astonished that these bright young people, seem unable to make the leap that the dark woods may not be an actual forest, but perhaps represents a place inside oneself that is somber, cold, and sad, or that the old woman at the side of the road offering wisdom might be the voice you hear inside of yourself, called your intuition. 

          Just last month, in THE MOST uncomfortable storytelling sessions I have ever had (and may it always stay the MOST uncomfortable), a young man – bright and articulate, could not see the metaphors and symbolism in the stories to such a degree, he was angry at us for wasting his time, and, I felt he was saying, lying to him.  My fellow storyteller (Paula Davidoff), and I tried – she a lot more clearly than I - I have to say, to get him to understand the meanings and connections that could be found in the stories he had RAPTLY listened to, but the more we talked, the more he pushed back.  For him there was no “grey” – all black and white.

          That conversation did two things to me – it saddened me, and then, in the same way I have always responded since I was a teen, and was told to do something I didn’t want to do – it made me more determined!  It made me see, even more, the value of storytelling and folktales, and it reinforced in me a sense of purpose.  I’m not a shrink, a social worker, a classroom teacher, or a guidance counselor, but I am an AVID user of my imagination, and I intend to use that skill to reach who I can, whenever I can.  It may not always work, we tellers may not always break through, but as I watch this epidemic of “no-imaginationitis”, I know I have to do something, and luckily for me I have the ammunition of the fabulous folktales from a multitude of lands to use.  And I know that out there, there are storytellers, librarians, teachers, moms, dads, aunties, and grandparents that take up this cause.  So, here are my closing words to those of you who see the spread of “No-imaginationitis” in our fine land.  Take the kids you can and  reach in and draw them out – dance, paint, read, dress up, EXPRESS!!   Imagination is not a skill that should go the way of the dinosaurs.  Let’s help kids evolve into human beings with rich, colorful imaginative inner lives, that will lead them to deep, meaningful outer lives. 

          Got a little preachy there at the end, I know, but I believe it all.  Thanks for reading!!!     Julie Pasqual   

        

            

             

Trusting the Tale

Illustration by Arthur Rackham

    Seven Ravens, from the collection of the Brothers Grimm, is one of those stories in which a sister is unwittingly responsible for the suffering of her brothers. In the stories I’ve read, seven or twelve brothers are transformed into birds: swans, geese, or, in this case, ravens. The fate of the brothers is dependent upon the actions of their sister; she is their only hope for a return to normal human existence, but to save her brothers she must make some sacrifice.

In Seven Ravens, the brothers are transformed on the day of the sister’s birth. Because the babe was sickly, the father sent his oldest son to the well to fetch water, so that she could be christened immediately. All of the brothers ran off together and, in the ensuing commotion, the vessel in which they were to carry the water home was knocked into the well.  After waiting a time for his sons’ return, the father supposed that they had been distracted by friends or play and, frantic with concern for the sickly newborn, he spoke the words that must have haunted him for the rest of his life, “I may as well have seven ravens as seven sons.” At that moment, he heard a rustle of wings and, looking up, saw seven ravens fly over the house.

Of course, the sickly babe grew strong, even without the ritual lustration. In time, she discovered the story of her brothers’ disappearance and set out to rescue them. At this moment in the story, it becomes different from the other brothers-to-birds stories I know. First of all, the sister is very young when she begins her journey and she remains a child throughout it. Her journey takes her out of this world, to the homes of the sun, the moon, and the stars. In this last place, she learns that her raven brothers live in a glass mountain, and she is given a bone that will unlock its door. After another long journey, she reaches the mountain only to find that she has lost the bone-key. She despairs until, realizing that her own little finger is the same size and shape of the bone, she cuts off her finger, puts it into the keyhole, and unlocks the door. After this, the events of the story flow smoothly to the brothers’ change back into human beings, and all of the children return home to their parents.

I tell this story a lot. I sympathize with the poor father and pray that I will never be held to such close account for thoughtless speech. I am moved by the courage of the heroine, and I love the fact that, unlike many folktale sisters, she is granted her accomplishment while she is still a child. I love the images that come to my mind as I tell: the boys, looking at each other as the splash from the fallen pitcher echoes in the well, and therefore, each witnessing the transformation of the others; the seven great black birds flying over the thatched roof of the house; the sister walking through the world carrying her little chair on her back; the stars in shining raiment, each sitting in its own seat, and the little girl placing her chair among them. I remember the faces of my own children as I watch her earnest explanation of her predicament. Later, I see the thick, black velvet curtain behind which she hides to wait for the ravens’ appearance. I see the dull gleam of the mother’s golden wedding band at the bottom of the seventh raven’s wine glass, and I see the brothers and their sister start, hand-in-hand, on their journey home.

However, there is one moment in the story that I do not see clearly, that is the child’s self mutilation. My cerebral imagination by-passes the event. It is only accessible through the heart. I hope that the children to whom I tell the story also experience that moment as I do, but of course, I don’t know. I watch their faces as it happens, and I have never yet seen a sign of the horror that a vivid image of the picture must evoke. When the story is over, they often ask about it. The occasional fifth grade boy says, “gross” or “cool” when he refers to it. But children seem to understand that difficult tasks require a sacrifice and that the best things are worth it.  

Yesterday I was telling Seven Ravens to a mixed audience of about thirty people who were attending a holiday arts celebration in Madison, NJ. The storytelling site was a small, lovely alcove in the Museum of Early Trades and Crafts. Children sat at my feet on a richly colored Persian rug; their parents and other adults sat in chairs behind them. As the little girl in the story approached the glass mountain, I looked into the faces of the children on the front row. They were completely absorbed in the tale – their eyes were fastened on me, their mouths slightly open. I looked beyond them at the adults and saw that a young adult couple sitting on a bench at the side of the room were just as present in the story.

The youngest children in the room were between two and four years old, much younger than my usual audience, and as I moved toward the story’s climax, I began to doubt myself. I wasn’t sure that I should tell it properly. I was afraid of what the children might see. I thought that maybe I would just say that the sister put her finger in the keyhole without cutting it off. It wouldn’t be so different, I told myself. She would be using her intact body to release her brothers, instead of sacrificing her finger to her quest.

As I write this, it seems odd to me that I could have had this series of thoughts without breaking the narration of the tale, but in the five or six sentences between the time the sister realized she had lost the bone-key and the cutting of her finger, I went back in forth in my mind about what to do. Just as the sister realized that her finger might be a substitute for the key, I glanced up at the couple on the bench. They met my gaze and I saw that the young woman’s eyes were brimming with tears. In that second, I knew that I couldn’t betray the story. There was, at least, one listener who needed the tale intact. I didn’t dwell in the moment. As soon as the girl found the solution to her problem, I spoke in one breath, “She took the knife she had brought to cut her bread, cut off her little finger, and when she held it between her thumb and forefinger and stood on her little chair, it just reached the keyhole and the door of the glass mountain swung open.”

As I spoke, I enacted her movements, but when the girl entered the glass mountain, I stopped talking, stood still, and took as few seconds to see the interior of the mountain and to look into the little faces on the front row. The children’s eyes were open wide, but they were smiling. They knew that everything would be fine. I looked at the young woman on the side. There were tears on her cheeks, but she was smiling, too. 

Postcard illustration by Oskar Herrfurth

“Trust the story,” I say to parents who wonder if they should read the “real” fairy tales to their children. Sometimes, we tellers need to be reminded, too.