It was my great privilege to be able to present a workshop at last years National Storytelling Conference in Sydney. The idea for my workshop sprang from my experiences using Elisa Davey Pearmain’s fabulous and comprehensive book Once Upon a Time: Storytelling to teach character and prevent bullying: Lessons from 99 Multicultural Folk Tales for Grades K-8.
Pearmaine has created an
extremely practical, easy to use, rich resource. It includes ideas on how to tell
the stories, how to teach storytelling, how to use the pre-story and follow-up
activities in the classroom, how to create a character education program in
your school and how to set the scene and create an atmosphere conducive to
storytelling and listening.
She has grouped 99 multi-cultural folktales stories according to 12 categories of good
character: co-operation, courage, diversity appreciation, empathy, friendship,
generosity, honesty and fairness, leadership and citizenship, perseverance,
respect, responsibility, self-control and bullying prevention. Beside each tale
is a little note stating the stories country of origin, main themes and which
year-group it works best for.
The follow-up activity ideas
are very do-able, fun and age-appropriate. They range from discussing
particular questions, to dramatization to artwork to writing provocations to
creative visualisation.
The reason I began working
with the stories in the book was that in 2011, my daughter had become the
target of quite severe bullying from a girl who had been fostered by a local
family. She had undergone severe traumas within her birth family, as well as
subsequent upheavals when she had been removed form a happy placement and separated
from her younger siblings. All this was translating into some quite heavy
behaviour, towards my daughter Layla, who was then 7 years old. The foster
family knew what was happening, were doing their best and it wasn’t appropriate
to approach them. So I decided to use stories to try to alleviate the
situation. I hadn’t worked therapeutically with story much before, but felt it
couldn’t hurt and might help.
Each week I’d ask Layla’s
teacher what was the main issue at play which I could address through story. It
was usually about the need for generosity, empathy, honesty and kindness.
The first thing that struck
me about the class was that they were exceptionally distractible. I had told
stories in in many classes at our school as a mum. While this was quite
different to being a professional visitor, the students were still
well-behaved. But this class had at least six high energy boys and girls and
the atmosphere- even in mid-morning was often close to a whirlwind. I was a bit
taken aback and my usual settling tricks weren’t working, so I had to get used
to a slightly different process, but the students did come to settle a little better
once we were in the routine of stories. The wildness of the class meant we
rarely able to do many activities after the story. After a guided discussion,
sometimes the students drew the story and sometimes they rewrote it. Once we
retold it in a circle and once we had a go at enacting the story in groups. The
children were enthusiastically engaged in the process.
I
told Feathers, Sweet and Sour Berries, The Magical Axe, The Legend of the Big
Dipper as well as some I have told for a long time which were also in the book:
Rat and The Tailor (which I tell as The Blue Coat).
One of my favourite stories
is ‘The Legend of The Big Dipper’. It is a story of generosity. The girl in the
story uses a tin dipper to gather water at great effort and generously gives it
to others. The water dipper changes to silver, then gold, then diamond. Then
along come a wise woman who throws it into the sky where it becomes the star
constellation and where the water drops fall, a spring bubbles up. I told it at the workshop and people
re-enacted in groups exquisitely.
So
what effect did the stories appear to have? We were hoping that the whole class
would benefit as kindness was an issue
for most of the children. Without being in continued contact with the little
girl in question, I am not sure. She certainly loved stories. The stories were
not a magic spell or instant fix which I didn’t realistically expect, though the
irrational side of me did want a quick change for my daughter’s sake!
What
struck me was how children can be extremely resistant to recognising their own
behaviour in a story, if it is negative. I didn’t push it. However, in
discussion, they were very keen to tell examples of when they had been kind or
generous. On reflection I confess I can be the same. When I first told ‘The
Luckless One’ to my partner, he said it reminded him of me. I was extremely
indignant, but could eventually recognise that at times I fail to recognise the
blessings in my life.
I
often discussed with Layla’s teacher whether the stories were having any
effect. She said there were two spin-offs. One was that she began to tell
stories again, because she wanted to reinforce the ideas in the stories between
my visits. Secondly, she said the stories gave her and the wonderful teacher’s
aide in the class, a neutral reference point and a shared language with the
students. Rather than just suggesting the children act kindly, she could say ‘Remember
the boy in the story of Sweet and Sour Berries. Let’s see if we can all be kind
and generous like him.’ So it created a sense of community in the classroom
because they had shared stories. The stories helped remind me to consider my own
actions more carefully too.
Of course there are many
other great books on healing tales, which I list on my resources page at my
website www.storytree.com.au and
there are great treasures at the Healing Story Alliance (H.S.A.) website too. In a world where inspiring spiritual messages
and wise role-models are sometimes few and far between for all of us, and where
we are often barraged with advertising and reality TV shows which encourage
selfishness, competition and nastiness, collections of tales like this are real
treasure indeed! I hope to continue my adventure with these tales.
Pearmain, Elisa. (2006) Once
Upon a Time: storytelling to teach character and prevent bullying: Lessons from
Multicultural Folk Tales for Grades K-8, Character Development
Group, Greensbooro, NC, USA.www.CharacterEducation.com Library of Congress Number: 2007934445
