The Power of Storytelling

Thanks for an inspiring week of preplanning! I am always left in awe of the talent we have at Trinity!

Every Friday during the school year, I send out an article that caught my attention and that I hope provokes thought in you. 

As we live in a hectic, on-demand society where people are used to the 140-character limit of Twitter, I try to parse the weekly article to its salient points, so it’s a fairly quick read.

Throughout the year the articles focus on an array of topics appropriate to Trinity: for example, fostering inclusion in the classroom, supporting a high-quality preschool education, maximizing student learning, etc.

I don’t always support the position of every article, but as a believer in an open marketplace of ideas (something that is sadly today, especially at colleges and universities, in these polarized times), I like to read articles that make me think, especially ones that confront my beliefs and hidden biases as an educator.

This year’s first article summary is How Teens Can Develop and Share Meaningful Stories with The Moth, which I referenced on Tuesday.

As we talked about, helping empower students to become storytellers supports so much of what we strive for as an elementary school: writing, public speaking, social-emotional skills, DEI.

Feel free to try out storytelling in your classroom. I’m also linking an article entitled How to Be a Better Storyteller which provides simple steps to enhance one’s storytelling abilities.

Thanks again for a great week and enjoy our final weekend before our kids come back to us excited for the 2017-18 school year!

Joe 

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Aleeza Kazmi endured her first identity crisis when she was 6 years old. It was during a first-grade art class, when she and her classmates were drawing self-portraits. Seeing herself as just like her white-skinned peers, Kazmi reached for the peach-colored oil pastel to fill in her face. Just then, her teacher intervened. “That’s not your color,” the teacher told her, and handed Kazmi a stubby brown crayon instead. “That was the first time I realized I wasn’t white like all my friends,” she said.

Kazmi told this story about her first brush with racial awareness when she was a senior in high school, before dozens of classmates. She had taken part in a 10-week afterschool program run by The Moth, a storytelling enterprise that invites people of all ages to share their personal narratives on stage. Along with a handful of classmates, Kazmi had met once a week to identify a powerful personal story and learn how to tell it. Delivering the tale about her art-class trial in the school’s black box theater, without notes, marked the culmination of Kazmi’s storytelling work.

The Moth has been around for 20 years. The program’s founder named it after the fluttery insect when he realized that people gathered to storytellers like moths to light. Over the past few years, The Moth has moved into schools, offering afterschool workshops, a class curriculum and an intensive three-day storytelling session for teachers.

The essential ingredients of a Moth story are simple: Participants tell their stories aloud and without notes; when storytellers talk, the audience listens; and all stories at a given session revolve around one simple theme. The point is to build community among storytellers and listeners.

One school in Manhattan had students develop their personal stories around the the theme of courage.

Students told stories about kitchen disasters, lost hamsters, and minor acts of adolescent agitation, like chopping off hair. Anxious at first about their ability to perform, students came to embrace the experience, knowing they had something to say and experiencing their own voice as something valuable.

The Moth works to build a tight feeling of community in the class, so kids feel safe before sharing personal stories. Teachers play some Moth podcasts like  Bad Haircut and  Lego Crimes, helping students discern how a storyteller adapts language to build suspense or generate humor. 

At the end of the class, students tell their narratives aloud within their small group and then have the option to share with the entire class.

By listening to classmates’ tales of embarrassment or woe, students recognize their shared vulnerability. 

So far, 300 teachers from around the world have formed partnerships with The Moth that allow them to use the curriculum for free and to interact with one another on a just-for-teachers portal. 

For her part, Aleeza Kazmi is hooked on storytelling. She often hears from students who saw a video of her Moth talk, and said that many identify with her ill-fated choice of colors for her childhood self-portrait. Now 19, Kazmi tells her story to elementary school children and takes part in other Moth education programs.

“It’s so cool that a story that happened in my life has now touched people around the world,” Kazmi said.