BCTELA

It is a pleasure to write this article, first of all because I was invited to as a follow-up to my ‘Act the Story’ workshop at the 2007 BCTLA Conference held in Vancouver last October, and second, because participants were eager to have more questions answered than time allowed.

Too often, the uninitiated think of storytelling as just for children. But take a moment. Listen to the young people around you. Storytelling is everywhere, particularly in and around the classroom: boys talking about sports or video games, girls talking about fashion and their favourite music, both talking about each other, either face to face, by cell phone, or by text messaging. The teenage world is a cornucopia of storytelling. Teachers who tap into that world have the chance of getting to know their students better than they could ever imagine, and once such a connection is made, the possibility of actually teaching them becomes easier.

Think of your own experiences as a high school student.Which teachers do you remember as being good teachers? For the most part, you probably do not think of the brilliant, authoritarian, or pedagogical teachers. No, you probably think of those who showed understanding, perhaps compassion, those who seemed to know and understand you, not as a grade, but as a person. Young people today are no different. Get to know them, let them get to know you better and there is a good chance that you will make a difference.

Why tell stories

For many of you, becoming a teacher was a very natural choice. From a very early age, you probably loved reading and writing, and the learning process came easily. And when you finally started thinking about a career, well, teaching seemed the perfect fit. But once in the classroom, you found that most students were not as enthusiastic about learning as you had been. For the most part you were faced, not with natural learners, but reluctant ones, many of whom used every excuse not to learn. As a result, you may stand for five hours per day faced by a wall against learning, a wall so thick it seems impenetrable. Storytelling can help tear down that wall; it can help to bring both teacher and student down to a more even playing field, where equals meet equals, a place so safe that even teachers can learn from their students.

 

Additional benefits

The benefits of storytelling and storytelling technique go far beyond the telling of stories. As mentioned above, teachers stand in front of a class five hours per day. One might say they are on stage the entire time. They are vocalizing. They are gesturing. They are focusing their attention and the attention of their students on a series of tasks, facts, and figures. Each task has a beginning, middle, and end. If looked at closely, each task may be seen as an individual story. But telling stories for five hours a day is not easy, even for seasoned professional storytellers. As the hours pass, fatigue sets in, the mind wanders, one sometimes runs out of breath, or faces throat irritation, and if not checked, voice loss. Storytelling technique can help teachers, like it helps storytellers, to get through the rough patches. Breathing exercises help teachers to speak for longer periods of time with far less fatigue. Vocal exercises help them to become far more expressive in their vocal delivery. Storytelling and the use of storytelling technique on a regular basis can improve both of the above and help teachers to orchestrate their lessons, making them far more interesting and compelling to their young adult students.

 

The main characteristics of effective storytelling

Let us start with the most important don’t. Do not tell didactically. A story is not a list of facts, but a string of emotions. It is told from within, from a personal place, a place where the story has already touched the teller deeply. If a story has not touched the teller somewhere deep in his or her own being, then it has little chance of reaching listeners in any meaningful way. So, as much as possible, let yourself go, let the story take you over, as if it were happening for the first time.

To help you do this, underline those words and phrases in the story that truly touch you. If you are able to visualize, close your eyes during rehearsal and see the story as it unfolds. Think of events from your own life that parallel the events of the story. First, try to recall the feelings connected with those events, then use those recalled feelings to help tell the story.

Most of what I would suggest to any storyteller working in an intimate environment is also true for teachers tellingstories in their classroom. Although I would not suggest that you create a story corner with a storyteller’s chair and cushions, developing an atmosphere for storytelling is extremely important. The atmosphere change from regular classroom time to that for storytelling can be very subtle, but a change is helpful, even if only in the voice.

Young adults are more often comfortable with a relaxed, casual approach. The more comfortable you are, as a teller, the more comfortable your listeners will be. Keep your reathing relaxed. If you feel tension in your hands, neck, or throat,think relaxed. Any tension, anywhere in the body, canlead to difficulties.

Don’t be afraid to use your hands for expression, but keep from being overly expressive, either vocally or physically. Over-expression takes focus from the story and puts it on the teller. The story is what is important. Keepthat in mind, stay in the moment, and the story will, in most cases, tell itself.

No matter how large your audience, think in terms of telling to one person. Speak to that person privately and intimately, as if the story is unfolding before your very eyes. Use all the inflection that you would normally use in your everyday speech, as you do when telling a close friend about something that has just happened to you or someone else dear to you. Storytelling is an intimate experience, and deserves the respect owed to an intimate experience.

A story well told is well supported, physically and vocally. The body supports the story, shows strength when strength is needed and in contrast shows weakness when that is needed. The breath is also supportive. Even in an intimate situation, good breathing habits make it easier to make the vocal changes necessary to make a story come alive. And finally, the voice itself is versatile enough to create whatever character or situation that arises and has the ability to make a story real and vivid to each and every listener, as if the story were being told only to him or to her.

For more about the three units of performance, the Body Unit, the Breathing Unit, and the Vocal Unit, as well as exercises for each, please go to:
maxtell.ca/public_ftp/actthestory.pdf

Eye contact will help to create an intimate atmosphere.
Browse the room with your eyes. Look into everyone’s eyes.
Do not linger. An instant of eye contact is enough to help your listener open up. Repeat this process over and over
again, from the beginning of your story to the end. If eye contact makes you nervous, start by letting your eyes skim just over the heads of your listeners, or even better, just over their eyes. Creating the illusion of looking into their eyes is a good start.

The most important thing to think about while storytelling is the story itself. How you feel about the story, how your feelings change, moment by moment, as the story develops, and how the ending affects you. The more you make connection with the story, the more chance you have of making connection with your listeners.

 

Finding and choosing stories

Start with stories you loved reading when in high school. You may still have a collection or two of short stories in your home library. If not, talk to your librarian at school or at the local library. Librarians are always happy to help.

If your school board and/or teachers’ federation supports a list serve, put out a general call for other teachers who may already be using storytelling in their classroom, or at least those with similar interests. Share your resources. Share your discoveries, your setbacks, your moments of glory. For more resources, see Internet Resources below.

Once again, chose stories that you like, stories that reach
right into your soul, and twig emotions that perhaps you have forgotten. Choose topics that touch you deeply and you will touch the hearts of your listeners. When told well, a story with a universal theme, whether it be a legend, a classic, or a personal story can easily cross the age barrier and stimulate interest in young adult listeners.

Once you feel comfortable with these, then branch out
to something more modern. Above all, don’t choose stories
that teach a moral, choose those that have a solid plot and
vivid characters, stories that speak directly to young people and the issues important to them: their hopes and dreams, their struggles and fears.

 

How to get to the core of one’s own feelings

Become aware of your feelings as you read a story and learn a story. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? What does something feel like to the touch? What personal experiences come to mind as you read? How do those personal experiences affect your feelings as you read the story? Allow yourself to relive those personal experiences to the fullest. If they make you laugh, allow yourself to laugh. If they make you cry, allow yourself to cry. Now, incorporate those feelings into the telling of the story.

 

Start with a hook

Often young adults are reluctant listeners, so grab their attention. Tell an urban legend, something slightly gory or even something personal from your own days in high school. Once you have their attention and gained their trust, you will be surprised what young adults will listen to and enjoy. In asafe and comfortable environment, it is easy to steer young adults into conversations about their favourite cartoons. And given time, they can also be encouraged to talk about and perhaps even share stories they enjoyed at various ages as far back as nursery rhymes and picture books.

Especially when teaching English - setting, character and plot development, as well as the many literary and poetic devices - start with stories or poems that most of your class are already familiar with. By starting with samples that perhaps were their favourites, and then introducing poetic devices used in those samples, you will have the opportunity to create a more solid foundation on which to build laterwhen dealing with far more complicated literary material.

Often when teaching the craft of writing or storytelling to young people, I start with something they have read and hopefully loved some time earlier. “Let’s read that story (or poem) again,” I say. And after doing so, “Why do you think you liked it? Is there anything in the story (poem) that relates directly or indirectly to you or your friends when you were younger? What was your favourite part and why? Has that story (poem) affected you in any way? If so, how?”

It is only then that I introduce the literary devices that were used in the sample and help my students to explain why those literary devices were used and whether they were successful, or not successful, and why. Starting with something more familiar and perhaps loved makes the transition into the more complicated aspects of language and literature easier, both for the student and the teacher. The key here is to create a safe environment in which everyone feels comfortable talking about what they liked or loved at an earlier stage in their lives.

 

Reading rather than telling stories

Many teachers do not have the time to memorize stories, so they read them cold. This takes practice. If you and your spouse like stories, read before bed. I do exactly that as a regular practice. I make no preparation; I simply pick up a book and read.

However, I do read with intent, the intent of reading into the moment. In other words, I read as if I am experiencing the events and crisis of the story, one by one, as they occur in while reading. I do my best to live every moment, in the moment, as if they were unfolding before my very eyes. It takes a lot of time and practice to develop this skill along with the help of a devoted and encouraging listener. The most important thing is for the two of you to be relaxed and enjoy the story together. Over time, you will become a far better storyteller.

 

Developing your skills

The skills of storytelling are numerous; however, they are not as difficult as many might think. We use many storytelling skills naturally, in our daily speech, to one extent or another, but then become self conscious when asked to actually tell a story. The thought of being on stage for many is frightening, and let’s face it, storytelling, at least in a small way, is a theatrical act, but with practice comes comfort.

One way to learn the skills of telling stories is to listen closely to those around us, especially those who have a natural flare for talking with others and taking focus in a crowd. Listen to how their voices change in pitch; how they speed up at one moment, then slow down at another; how they raise or lower their voice to suit the topic or emotion of the moment; and in particular how and when they pause. The pause, moments of silence within a story, punctuate and force the listeners’ mind to look ahead, to anticipate, and draws them into the mystery or magic of a story. Observe their body language, their facial expression, and how relaxed they seem. Some may even change their voice slightly to indicate a change in character or emotion. How does he or she express feeling, subtly or overtly? What helps listeners to listen or causes them to turn and listen to someone else? Good talkers have good communication skills; take from them what can work best for you. And remember, a good storyteller is also an excellent listener.

If it helps to work with others, join a storytelling or acting group in your area. If there aren’t any, start one yourself. And if you can’t get fellow teachers to get involved, turn to librarians. You may find eager recruits there.

 

Think relaxed

To think relaxed you must breathe properly. Natural breathing is into the stomach. To experience natural breathing, lie on your back, flat on the floor, or on your bed, with your knees slightly bent. Place the palms of your hands on your diaphragm. You diaphragm is located at the junction of your ribcage and your stomach. Exhale and feel how your stomach slowly drops; inhale and feel how your stomach slowly rises. If you are breathing properly, there is little or no breathing into the chest area. Now, stand and practice breathing into your stomach, not into your chest.

 

Storytelling as a tool for teaching

For the most part, I encourage teachers not to use storytelling as a teaching tool, a direct teaching tool that is, for a story well told always teaches something worth learning, though not overtly. However, since many teachers believe that a task that does not have a clear and direct link to the curriculum does not belong in the classroom, I offer the following: no matter what subject you are teaching, be it English, math, history, or calculus, there are stories connected to every revolutionary discovery, and every famous practitioner or inventor. Make these stories your own. Share them with your class. But make those stories come alive, so that your students have a feeling that you are not simply delivering memorized facts, but that you are talking about real people, people who have truly made a difference in the world, people you truly admire and care about.

 

A storytelling example

For the most part, I encourage teachers not to use storytelling as a teaching tool, a direct teaching tool that is, for a story well told always teaches something worth learning, though not overtly. However, since many teachers believe that a task that does not have a clear and direct link to the curriculum does not belong in the classroom, I offer the following: no matter what subject you are teaching, be it English, math, history, or calculus, there are stories connected to every revolutionary discovery, and every famous practitioner or inventor. Make these stories your own. Share them with your class. But make those stories come alive, so that your students have a feeling that you are not simply delivering memorized facts, but that you are talking about real people, people who have truly made a difference in the world, people you truly admire and care about.

I felt trapped. What was I going to do?

It so happened that two things came together to help me. While waiting for the class to begin, I noticed a row of essays stapled around the room, essays about Caesar’s assassination, essays that had no sense of humanity in them whatsoever. Then, moments before I was about to be introduced, I looked out the window. There, not far below me were a number of tennis courts. One of them had a personal connection to me. Suddenly I knew what to do. I totally changed my program. I did not tell stories, well, not the stories I had planned. No, I invited the class to join me at the window. I told them how Robert Holroid, a close friend of mine, a guitar maker who, at the age of thirty had become famous across Canada for his handmade guitars, valued at thirty-five hundred dollars each. Then I told them that Bob had died of a heart attack on those very steps.

I then turned their attention to their essays about Caesar and asked what they could have done to make them more meaningful. Once primed with Bob’s story, the class overflowed with insights on brotherhood and betrayal that amazed both their teacher and me. Once the students saw Caesar as a real man, they had a better idea of how to speak of his death in both respectful and imaginative ways. Death was not some distant thing that happens to someone we don’t know. Death and assassination had become a sensitive issue worth discussing in depth.

A story, with as clear a connection to a task as the one just described, seldom springs out at one at the precise moment it is needed. However, with forethought and reparation, a well told story, and it need not be long, as illustrated by the example above, can easily segue into a lesson, bridge two parts of a lesson, or bring a lesson to an interesting and vivid conclusion.

 

Taking the curriculum out of storytelling

As important as it is for teachers to use their time wisely and to set particular goals or outcomes for each task, there are times when deviating from the usual curriculum based format of teaching can actually be a good thing. As mentioned earlier, many students are not eager learners, and some will do absolutely anything to get out of it. There are many reasons for this: problems at home, poor learning skills, peer pressure, learning disabilities, or second language problems. These problems and others can make teaching extremely difficult and sometimes impossible.

Storytelling can teach language skills without directly teaching. In the right hands, a well-told story, or better yet, many well-told stories, can help students to get over their own barriers against learning and language, and can set them on a more direct learning path. For others, a seed of discovery may be planted, a seed that, perhaps, does not sprout immediately, but may, given time, be the seed that changes a life. For an illustration of how a music teacher planted a seed that eventually changed my life see my article, “A Gift from Music”, Teacher Newsmagazine, 2006, www.bctf.ca/publications/NewsmagArticle.aspx?id=11496

 

In conclusion

Storytelling and the use of storytelling technique can help teachers prepare physically, vocally, and mentally, to help make the time spent each day in the classroom a more focused, vibrant, and enjoyable experience for all. Stories themselves can introduce young adults to the men and women (the scientists, mathematicians, doctors, sociologists, or politicians, to name but a few) who have been responsible for the great discoveries of our time and times before. Stories can turn these strangers, as it were, into real people worth reading about, worth knowing, and above all worth studying about. Get to know who someone is, in a personal way, then the facts have substance. Dress a subject in human form, create an atmosphere in which that human form exists in the minds of young adults as someone they can admire, then your job as a teacher becomes that much easier.

 

Resources

More sources for stories: Biographies and autobiographies, excerpts from novels and short stories, fables, myths, legends, tall tales, family history, and personal experiences, as well as the achieves of your local museum. Check the following websites for listings of books covering every aspect
of storytelling from storytelling styles and techniques to vast collections of stories on a wide variety of topics:

 

Tim Sheppard’s Storytelling Links:

www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/tellinglinks.html

National Storytelling Network:

www.storynet.org

The Library of Congress

www.libraryofcongress.org

 

Two of my favourite short story collections for young adults are: The Open Window: Essays and Short Stories, Longmans Canada Limited, 1961, and Coming of Age: Short Stories about Youth and Adolescence, National Textbook Company, Illinois, USA, 1994. If you have any questions about how storytelling may be used to enhance any particular lesson you are teaching or plan to teach, please contact me at robert@maxtell.ca.