Press Play to hear Nothando Zulu speaking on participation on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Nothando Zulu writes..
Participation, Participation, Participation...

I began telling stories as a member of an acting ensemble in 1976, presenting storytelling as a major part of our repertoire. We worked primarily in park and recreation centers and schools. As members moved away or went into other fields, we evolved into‐ and I cofounded ‐ the Black Storytellers Alliance (BSA) in direct response to the demand for storytelling to deliver the inspirational and cultural lessons embodied in our stories.

Early on I encouraged members of the audience to share the storytelling space by becoming a part of the story and one of the characters in the story. On many occasions, I was unable to use all the audience members who wanted to participate! It was wonderful to have so many trying to join in the storytelling process and reinforces oral storytelling as a powerful medium. Therefore, I decided to use a kind of birthday system for who I would choose:

• I start with participatory stories in mind
• I ask the audience who had a birthday in the prior month
• Depending of the number of positive responses, I decide on the story to
present.

One example is Ananse and His Six Children. If I receive more than six positive responses, I make some twins or triplets and sometimes quadruplets! I may use the age of the participant to determine the specific role of each participant. In the story Ananse and The Moss Covered Rock, Little Miss Bush Deer has to be at least a third grader, to understand and answer “No” to each of the questions asked by the Ananse character. When the participant is younger, (s)he may miss the concept and answer in the affirmative.

Audience participation is fun and most effective when the storyteller has extensive experience with audience inclusion.

Breif Bio
Nothando Zulu is a Master storyteller who has been sharing stories with audiences for over 30 years. She shares stories that entertain, educate, motivate and inspire. She has performed at many venues locally, nationally and internationally. She draws from an extensive resource of colorful, often funny characters whose antics and follies leave audiences pondering their own life’s lessons. As Director of Black Storytellers Alliance, she and her husband with the help of the Board of Directors has produced a three-day storytelling festival celebrating the art of Black storytelling called, “Signifyin’ & Testifyin’” (now in the 17th year). Nothando is also a wife, mother, grandmother, community and political activist who believes in the power of stories.

Read more about Nothando Zulu on her website http://www.yourfavoritestorytellers.org/nothando-zulu.htm
and on the Black Storytellers Alliance Website http://www.blackstorytellers.com/

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Press Play to hear Dr. Sherry Norfolk speak on why would should use storytelling in school settings on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #091 Sherry Norfolk for $2.23 Why storytelling should be in Schools.

Sherry Norfolk Writes...

Last year, I taught a 3rd grade storytelling and creative writing residency in St Louis. The kids I worked with were typical – meaning that every child was different from every other child. They each had unique interests, skills and abilities. They each had different life experiences and different needs. Typical class, right? So…what? Why am I telling you about these typical kids?

Because they WERE typical! Because in that class, there were some kids who HATED to write and some kids who NEVER paid attention in class and some kids who HATED to get up in front of people for any purpose whatsoever. And because they all wrote willingly – even enthusiastically. They all paid attention – to me and to each other. They all told their stories eagerly.

And that’s not so typical, is it?

No, I don’t hand out candy or quarters or wave a wand -- but I do know some magic. I know how to create different points of entry to learning through storytelling. Different from what they’ve experienced before. Different from what they expect. Different ways to engage them and keep them engaged.

Some examples:
DeAndre didn’t want to write: but he was sitting there making up a rap verse that told his story – when I told him he could write his story in rap, he grabbed his pencil!
Tommy wouldn’t write a rough draft: but he was intrigued by the sounds and voices…when he learned that he was going to et to do them if he had a story, he wrote!
Lisa didn’t want to finish her story: but she loved the idea of acting out the story with a partner. She needed story in order to do it, so she wrote!
Myeisha hated the idea of doing a final copy: I provided pretty paper – she wrote; knowing we were publishing the appealed to some of the other kids.
Dierra and Terence had said that they didn’t want to tell: but they LOVED acting out animal characters, and wanted to share their new talents;
Henry was adamant that he wouldn’t tell – couldn’t remember the story – and it was boring. I told it TO him with lots of voices, etc., so that he could learn it visually, auditorally and kinesthetically and feel confident about his story.

Let me be clear -- this isn’t about me. It’s about the power of Storytelling. It’s also about the power of meeting kids where they ARE and finding ways to take them where they need to be. It’s about different Points of Entry.

Each of those kids needed to be offered different Points of Entry to entice them to learn. It’s not a one-size-fits-all world, and no one teaching style or experience will be right for all kids. Storytelling allows you to engage All Ways of Knowing – the Whole Brain – what Howard Gardner calls the Multiple Intelligences.

You’re familiar with the concept of Multiple Intelligences, right? It’s the recognition that we can be intelligent in many ways, not just the words and numbers ways that are valued in school. Howard Gardner calls those
Linguistic Intelligence – word smart, and
Mathematical-Logical – number smart.
But he also identified
Kinesthetic Intelligence – body/movement smart
Musical Intelligence – rhythm and melody smart
Spatial Intelligence – picture smart (incl. 3-dimensional, directional)
Interpersonal Intelligence – smart about interactions between people
Intrapersonal Intelligence – smart about understanding yourself
Naturalist Intelligence – plant and animal smart

We all have some measure of each of these intelligences, but the proportions are different with each of us. As adults, you are allowed to make choices in how you participate in learning experiences. You find your comfort zone and inhabit it. But we don’t often allow children to choose what and how they want to learn. They don’t often have a chance to explore options and to determine what works best for them. They are rarely provided with the opportunity to view curriculum topics from different perspectives or points of entry.

Points of entry can also apply to learning styles – which are a bit different from intelligences. We are all born with a dominant learning style – either aural (we learn best by hearing), or visual (we learn by seeing), or kinesthetic (we learn by doing). Early on, a child is very heavily dominant in a particular learning style – he may be 85% aural or visual or kinesthetic.
He HAS to hear – or see – or DO to learn!

If he’s not allowed to learn in his dominant style, he’s not likely to learn at all! A child who is dominantly aural will totally tune out to visual stimuli, or even voices if they are droning and boring. A kinesthetic child who is made to sit still will become incredibly restless, distracted and distracting. A visual child who can’t see the picturebook or whose teacher doesn’t write the instructions on the board will not pay attention or follow instructions. These kids aren’t being deliberately bad – they absolutely can’t learn in the ways that they’re being offered!

So let’s return briefly to that typical classroom I told you about. Voices and sounds worked magic with the aural learner, and the pretty paper was a powerful motivation for the visual child. The kinesthetic kids were thrilled to get to act out characters and movement. The interpersonal children were happiest when sharing their stories with others. The linguistic kids wrote fluidly and used wonderful words, the mathematical-logical kids enjoyed creating logical cause-and-effect scenarios in their stories. The musical kid wrote his story as a rhythmic rap. Everybody had a chance to succeed. Everybody found their own points of entry into learning.

Storytelling provides those all-important points of entry. A few years ago, the evaluators for the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Whole Schools Initiative conducted educational research on integrating the arts [i.e., storytelling] into the curriculum. In the book The Arts Are an “R” Too, they tracked student and teacher performance and improvement as teachers used the arts to teach. They observed teachers creating situations in which academic content was taught and/or reinforced in and through the arts thus “inspiring” student learning. They wrote that what the art lessons add to the classroom is the opportunity for students to understand, remember, think, work together, become confident, and be motivated.

Arts integration enables students to be active, to experience things directly, and to express themselves in ways that best suit the students. In the process, of course, students have fun and enjoy themselves and are enthusiastic which, in turn, makes them eager for the next time they can engage in active, hands-on, and varied lessons. Ultimately, students will acquire knowledge about, appreciation of, and a talent for the cultural aspects of being a citizen in their community, state, and country. The evaluators concluded that the teacher’s artistic instructional repertoire enabled him/her to tap students’ varied strengths and provide multiple ways to acquire, process, and demonstrate what they learn. In other words -- the arts provide multiple points of entry!

We each – as teachers, and teaching artists – have the opportunity to fuel the flame of learning. We hold keys that can unlock joy and curiosity and enthusiasm and eagerness to learn. We know ways to engage children in an avid quest for knowledge, and methods of teaching that address all ways of knowing and styles of learning.

But we sometimes let inner messages stop us: It’s easier to do it the old way. This is the way we’ve ALWAYS DONE IT! We KNOW that each child is different, and that each child has different ways of learning. We KNOW that there is no ONE way to teach. But we let the inner – and outer -- messages control us. We teach the way the book says to do it, and if that fails to reach a child, we blame the child…or the book…or the system.

Let me share a poem with you…

The Cold Within
by James Patrick Kinney
Six humans trapped by happenstance
in black and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
the first woman held hers back
For of the faces around the fire
She noticed one was black.
The next man looking 'cross the way
Saw one not of his church
And couldn't bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.
The logs held tight in death's stilled hands
Was proof of human sin,
They didn't die from the cold without,
They died from the cold within.

Think about what can happen if those men around the fire put aside their inner messages -- what can happen if they look at things from a DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE. Imagine what will happen when we as teachers and storytellers share the fire!

Storytelling can ignite that fire -- it can engage kids in learning – and when kids are engaged, discipline problems begin to disappear. Attendance becomes more regular. Teachers can teach because the kids are eager to learn! That’s how classrooms can be transformed – and when more and more classrooms experience the power of storytelling, more and more transformation takes place within a school. Learning can and will happen in a place like that!

Now let’s talk about the KIND of learning that’s happening when storytelling comes into the classroom.

Einstein once said, "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. "

When storytelling enters the classroom, students aren’t just learning to regurgitate facts and figures – they’re learning to think imaginatively! In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink argues that never before has right-brain, creative thinking been more important than in today’s society. Due to the proliferation of technology, the changing workforce and shifts in the global marketplace, we must be teaching our children how to think conceptually and holistically – and how to think outside the box to solve challenging dilemmas. Learning through the arts is the most effective way to encourage and achieve that kind of thinking.

Storytelling provides an approach to education with the potential to transform whole schools by reinvigorating teaching in core subjects and inspiring students to greater joy and achievement in learning. Storytelling instruction has the power to shift thinking patterns and learning capacity for teachers and students alike. As Jane Stenson puts it in the Storytelling Classroom: Applications Across the Curriculum (Libraries Unlimited, 2006), "storytelling belongs in an on-going and fundamental way in education. It allows teachers to teach Language Arts, Social Studies, Math and Science standards in holistic and meaningful ways. It changes the way teachers manage children and the way everyone speaks to each other; it's democratic; it's fun; it's whole; and it's very, very humane."

So put storytelling to work in the classroom to teach the standards, engage the students, and empower learning.

Resources on the Research

• Caine, Renate Nummela and Geoffrey. Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain. Addison-Wesley, 1994. pp. 100-101.
• Gardner, Howard. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. Basic Books, 1993.
• Frames of Mind: Theory of Multiple Intelligence. Basic Books, 1993.

li>Hannaford, Carla. Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All in Your Head. Great Ocean Publishers, 1995.

• Haven, Kendall. Story Proof: the Science Behind the Startling Power of Story. Libraries Unlimited, 2007.
• Jensen, Eric. Arts with the Brain in Mind. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001.
• Education with the Brain in Mind. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2000.
• Brain-based Learning. Brain Store, Inc. 2000.
• "The Risk of Evolution: an Interview with Joseph Chilton Pearce." Parabola, Summer 1992, pp. 54 - 60. Outlines the research on the brain’s response to television vs. storytelling.
• Schiller, Pam. Start Smart: Building Brain Power in the Early Years. Gryphon House, 1999.
• Sousa, David. How the Brain Learns. 2nd ed. Corwin Press, 2000.
• Williams, Linda Verlee. Teaching for the Two-Sided Mind: A Guide to Right Brain/Left Brain Education. Simon & Schuster, 1983.
• Wolfe, Patricia. Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2000.

Bio

Sherry Norfolk is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, appearing at the International Storytelling Center, the Singapore Storytelling Festival, and many more festivals, schools, libraries and universities nationwide. Her strong, clear, direct stage presence immediately connects to audiences of all ages, and her use of tones, timbres, and rhythms in her telling breathes life into her rich repertoire of folktales from around the world. With a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and a master’s in Library Science, Sherry is the coauthor of nine books, including Literacy Development in the Storytelling Classroom (Libraries Unlimited, 2009) and The Storytelling Classroom: Applications Across the Curriculum (Libraries Unlimited, 2006). Sherry recently joined the faculty of Lesley University, teaching “Cultural Diversity through Storytelling” in their Creative Arts in Learning program.

You can learn more about Sherry Norfolk's work at http://www.sherrynorfolk.com/

Play to hear this interview that was recorded as a conference call on September 24th at 8 PM ET – 2008. Thomas Freeze spike about the advantages of sharing ghost stories with children.

Thomas Freese writes…
I ejoyied being on Eric’s “Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Podcast” on September 23, 8PM Eastern time. I’ve been a professional storyteller and author of ghost story books for over a decade in addition to my work as an art therapist and licensed professional counselor. Our topic will be “Why tell children scary ghost stories?” I have over a dozen storytelling programs that I perform for schools, libraries, festivals, churches and private parties. And several of those themed programs are ghost stories. I’ve collected both true ghost stories as well as authoring original fiction mysteries. Kids love storytelling and kids really love ghost stories!

I was fascinated with ghost stories since I was a middle school student. In fact, one of my favorite books, Strangely Enough, which I bought at a Scholastic Book Fair, is still in print and still available for kids at school. After reading it and questioning my Mom about real experiences with ghosts she related a tale of an encounter at her Aunt’s farm when out horse riding. I’ve been hooked on ghostly mysteries ever since.

Fast forward to my life in Kentucky where I was a volunteer singer at the historic 200 plus year Shaker village called Pleasant Hill, located near Harrodsburg in Mercer County. During my ten years singing I heard numerous stories of experiences with the Shaker spirits and I decided to take a stand, rescue the fact or folklore that would be lost oral accounts if no one else researched and recorded them. I interviewed over 60 employees and guests starting in 1998 and later (2005) published those first-hand tales in my Shaker Ghost Stories from Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. I found children of all ages fascinated with the stories of spirits who seemed to act very much in character with the once-living Shakers. Folks heard singing, shouting, stomping in the 1820 Meeting House. They saw Shaker-dressed figures on the old village pike.

As I performed my ghost stories program I included some true tales along with the fanciful entertaining fictional tales. I found kids no less interested in the true tales despite some of those seeming a bit less high-impact than fiction stories. I created a number of guitar songs to accompany my tales of witches, ghosts and other creatures. In live performances of mixed ages I noticed children mesmerized by true ghost stories.

In planning discussions with some teachers or librarians I was intrigued to see that some basically requested “the scarier the better” whereas others wanted assurances at least concerning the younger ages, say up to Kindergarten or first grade. I think a number of scary tales can be done successfully and without undue “trauma” at younger ages but the teller’s environment makes a difference. I sing a song to normalize the fear of ghostly stories at the beginning of my program. What I find fascinating also is that whatever the age of the audience, younger children through adult, one can find individuals sitting side by side of the same age where one is wide eyed with participatory “fear” and the other smirks and says, “That’s not scary enough!”

Please join me for this Podcast as I consider the topic with several professional hats, ghost story author, storyteller and professional counselor and therapist. My credentials include BA Psychology, MA Expressive Therapies, LPCC (Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, ATR-BC (Art Therapist Board Certified). In addition, I have worked as a Psychic Counselor and I can tell you that some things kids see are not “just their imagination!” Check out my books, first one mentioned above, and also Fog Swirler and 11 Other Ghost Stories and just released Strange and Wonderful Things: a Collection of Ghost Stories with Special Appearances by Witches and Other Bizarre Creatures.

Check out my site for more information: http://www.thomaslfreese.com/

Interview #058 Mary Jo Huff for $2.23 Early Literacy begins with rhythm rhyme & story time.

Mary Jo writes…
Language is critical for literacy development and storytelling creates an interactive bridge. Music, repeated phrases, and actions provide connections and invite participation by children when they become part of the storytelling event.

Working in schools demands that the storyteller is tuned into the state literacy standards. Storytelling connects many types of standards but I am only concentrating on the literacy connection. A good story challenges a child’s auditory, visual, and kinesthetic skills along with a phonemic awareness.

Performing in schools as a storyteller gives a teller the opportunity to address some reading readiness components such as repetition, retelling, rhyming and sequencing. When teachers are aware of what the stories have to offer they are amazed at the children’s reaction. Children develop their oral language skills by learning to tell and retell stories. They learn about their world, other cultures, visual imagery, moral and social issues and they increase listening skills.

Literacy standards connections to look for when telling stories for children:
• Phonological Awareness
• Understanding Stories
• Book Awareness
• Comprehension
• Word Awareness
• Story Enjoyment

Mountains of information are available for review and it can be mind boggling. Check out these organizations for documentation of literacy standards and review for connections to your type of storytelling.

• International Reading Association
• National Council of Teachers of English
• National Association for the Education of Young Children

Play with the sounds of language using songs, rhymes, chants and stories. Get excited about what you do. This life of mine is a passion and I work at it everyday in one way or another. Over the years I have been successful because I spent 35 years in the trenches with young children and also attended numerous conferences and developed a love for my life. I rely on my experiences to connect my storytelling to the world I live in and to share my experiences with anyone who will listen!

More about Mary Jo
I have 35 years as an Early Childhood Educator and 20 years as a storyteller. I believe in my heart that children who listen to stories develop a great vocabulary and understanding of their world. I used storytelling in the classroom and began visiting schools, libraries and doing workshops for teachers and librarians. In this period of time I have been in all but 7 states and visited with thousands of children and adults. Children need excitement, music, props and I like puppets with my storytelling. I am not a puppeteer I just play with puppets and I play with story.

Today I work as an author, storyteller, consultant, teaching artist and granny-on-the-go! I am a good traveler and my fluff goes with me wherever I go to tell stories. Children are hungry to hear a good told story and they connect especially when there is a little rhythm and rhyme. I have 7 books published and working on a couple at this moment along with 3 CDs and my favorite a new DVD called “Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Storytellin’ Fun!.

To learn more about Storyteller Mary Jo Huff go to her website at http://www.storytellin.com