long ago there was a caliph who ruled Baghdad and a son was born to him his first son and so we sent out through the city and notice that there would be a great feast and invited the people to come and they came with gifts for the new son gold and silver and jewels and finely woven carpets but the young sage mihaela Dobby brought no gift and this enraged the Calif and he had the guards dragged mihaela Dobby to him and he said why have you brought no gift to honor my son and the young
sage said the others they've brought visible gifts gold and silver and jewels I have an invisible gift it is this when the son your son is always enough to listen I will come each day and tell him the story and when he has grown he will be wise and compassionate and the hell would I be he did as he promised each day he came and told the boy a story and the boy grew to a young man and after many years the old Calif died and the young man now fully grown became the new caliph
and he ruled with more wisdom and compassion than any Calif had before him and when he died a tomb was erected in the centre of the city and at the careless request inscribed on the tomb were the words if I have ruled wise why fleeing with a passion it is because of the seeds sown by the story storytelling allows people to express their lives what's happened in their life what they've witnessed what they think they believe they witnessed storytellers were honoured in most countries it's so much so that in some countries they were second importance
to the king in medieval times if you wanted to apply to be a storyteller you had this job description you had to know all the current tales and you had to know the university thesis and be able to explain them you had to know the court scandals you had to know the medicinal benefits of herbs and simple medicine and an instance notice you must create a poem or a song for a lord or lady and you must play at least two instruments anyone want to apply Bruno Bettelheim the famous psychologist in his book the uses
of Enchantment the meaning and importance of fairytales said that stories remind us who we were where we came from and why we have values and beliefs we have today people understood that their good fortune or their tragedy wasn't a result of just randomness but of their integrity of how they treated others and how wisely they made decisions in their lives it seems for the past 60 years or so we've lost this connection with story in our personal and educational lives in 1965 I became a children's librarian in South Boston under the tutelage of Martha angler
was my mentor and she informed me for the Saturday sessions we didn't read stories we told them and so I became a storyteller in 1968 I was sent to Eugene to the University of Oregon to train as a Vista worker a volunteer and service to America a domestic Peace Corps and they placed me in Whittaker school the second poorest school in the state of Oregon and there we developed the after-school programs and it was the first time that I taught storytelling to young people and a year and a half later Roosevelt junior high committed to
an innovative program based on William glasses schools without failure this program centered on student choice students could choose from over 200 classes created by teachers every term and the focus was on learning improving skills and fostering the joy of learning and if something didn't work the model was nothing is written in concrete we can work together to improve it for both the students and the staff among the classes that I taught 34 class of curriculums over thus 32 years I was playwriting through the cameras I was American history through movies and movies were wonderful to
teach history because they're people and they're acting and we could talk about their behavior and the decision-making and what happened at that moment in history and then go 50 years ahead and talk about how that changed I located through human actions multicultural folktales and law was another one laughter reading and writing humor and jokes and so on wild and tame was animal literature and we had a focus on endangered species for half of it and then pet care and speakers would come in to talk about those areas so the students expanded their knowledge beyond just
reading books about animals storytelling and then the nationally known troupe of tellers and the storytelling was open to all skill levels and all class levels so when we were junior high there were 78 the ninth graders in the storytelling class when I was a middle school it was 6 7 & 8 and we had high achievers we had students who had visual impairments hearing impairments I had a few students with MS and we had non readers and was a non readers which simply paired them with a reader who would read the story to them until
they could learn to tell it and the empowerment of that student that low skill student when he or she could stand before an audience and tell a story and how the audience enjoy the telling was just something amazing to see and usually it led them to go into more interest in their academic skills when you go to polls and surveys most people one of the three greatest fears is giving a speech in public probably 99% of us will never give a formal speech in public as you would learn in a traditional speech class but probably
99% of us would like to share stories and do share stories with people because stories are us so if you want to learn to tell a tale you could learn to tell one in just half an hour with these steps first find a tale that's about one to two pages of text then read it through one time for the action what happens in the story read it through a second time to find out who the characters are what do they look like how do they speak how do they behave reader the third time through and
look at the scene what are the smells and sounds and colors close the book and tell the story out loud or tell it to a partner then open the book read it again find out what you've left out and tell the story again or maybe a third time in a half-hour have a story to tell when we did the beginning storytelling classes we would open with theatre games now theater games allow students to act and reprove their speaking skills as well as have fun being in front of an audience so even the lowest skill student
would walk in front of the group even the shy ones after a while after they walked in front of the group for 10 seconds they feel a little more confidence and they would say something and that would build from there because it was learning it wasn't grading each story that they told that three stories to tell the term and each one had to be from a different people or a different continent and so the continent would be in the evaluation sheet these are the skills we focused on vocal projection and clarity pacing character development dramatic
gestures body and facial expression preparation and in the final evaluation was also how they work together as a team or a class and so they had three of these and it would be based on the first one they told and the third one and the improvement they made so it was their individual improvement there was no comparison in terms of what other students were doing in the class in 1969 I created the troupe of tellers which became a nationally known storytelling troupe and it ran for 24 years and what it was is I would select
nine to ten students for the 12-person troupe who had good skills or I did my storytelling class at acting experience and would probably become very good tellers but also could work together as a team and then three to four spaces I would save those students I felt had special needs personal or family and although they may not become the greatest tellers the experiences that they have or would have in that storytelling would be meaningful to their lives and so these storytellers when they're in a troupe and they did perform each spring term for ten weeks
two to three times a week and they perform for about 3,000 students in the schools during each spring term so they students had to learn for stories they had prepared all the time to acapella songs and in a team of six they had to prepare to theater story theater pieces that they created they will go into the school and they would have to organize the class fit their program to the time schedule of the school I know that a moment's notice any one of them could be substituted as a teller for someone else or a
story would have to be substituted to meet the time when it so they had that flexibility after doing that for ten weeks nothing fazed them they would get up in groups of three and four hundred organizer program it through this storytelling because I had that self-confidence and they became as you'll hear life skills we have now a video that we put together called when the troupe tells tales this was done years ago Christmases ended in 1994 and it's film clips from past tellings and then what you will see is a studio production of the students
actually telling you know a disgusting story telling it what what they understand it is and how to prepare for it so on so let's have the first clip what about things like pacing the pace of what you tell you stories what do you watch out for and how do you do that Shana well pacing is one of the hardest things for me I usually when I run my story I usually like to do it in front of someone or in front of a mirror and watch myself and I always want to go slower in my
brain then I think I am because you all it's almost everyone usually goes too fast at the beginning when they first learn the story and then on Mondays where my main in class and work together I do it in front of the whole group and they tell me if I'm going too fast or you need to work on something so do any fun either critiquing or feedback that tells you about how fast to go also there's one problem we've noticed with a lot of us you know we're the story and we tell it we're very
loud with the dialogue when characters performing or what happens with a narrative it drops it drops and is off and mumbles so we have to be real conscious of keeping that narrative up and slow paced so it can be understood also because that provides the links to the characters and the actions this next little clip is just a slice of a boy telling a story what it was like what it's like the jungle there was a family of frogs not normal frogs there wide-mouthed frog first I'd be like any other frog except whenever they talk
their mouth has to open up ready why now after a while the mother frog had babies but she did not know what to feed the babies so she said pause then you go out to that lair jungle and you find out what to feed our babies husband said now there's a little clip and what always amazed me is how much they really understood about this storytelling and it wasn't just a rote thing that they understood how to choose the stories what skills they needed to develop what to look for in a story that would go
over well with an audience and what wouldn't given the types of things you've been doing with the troupe and the skills you've been learning how do you think he's gonna be useful to you in the future out in the world there um I think it's gonna be great to be able to tell like my kids stories and other things like that and to have the presence on stage before an audience that this class and this is going around and telling will give me and if my my future career involves like maybe stage play or acting
or something like that then I think this all is okay so this is give you a lot of basic training I think it will help me a lot I might not go into acting but if I into a play or something where I want to be a from public speaking it helps me a lot because found like in public speaking I already have confidence when I tell in front of large groups or say something in front of large bills it makes me feel more comfortable than it did before I go into career of public speaking
then I'm gonna have like stage presence and be able to pan and have the audience's attention and also just like in almost everything I can think of if I wanted to be a counselor and with babysitting if I mean it really helps if you can have stories right now ready to like you know get their attention so you know how about you know what's required you know what the expectations are feeling is like and you know and you're you're prepared to like come up with things quickly because I mean I think like if people are
sick or not there you have to like be prepared to tell two or three stories and so you can I mean you can be ready for anything Clara was students who came from Australia China to us her parents were studying in graduate school at the University of Oregon and they put her in my beginning storytelling class her accent was so thick we could not understand her stories when she told them it ended in spring term where she performed with the troupe of tellers and at the end of the spring we performed for the faculty and
Clara Clara did that performed for the faculty and when we were through the vice-principal came up to me and she said that was amazing because when she first came to Roosevelt she would sit in the corner of the cafeteria during lunch and cry because nobody could understand her and she had no friends and here she was performing before the faculty flawlessly and that was a growth through storytelling so this was a comment from a middle school teacher who used the storytelling techniques with her students and storytelling worked beautifully and helped my middle school students overcome
much fear and self-consciousness this afternoon seven kids are reading without books to the first and second graders so in 1983 the troupe received one of the state of Oregon Tom McCall Awards honoring grade kids and the award was given to the troupe for the 20 years that they told stories during the summer at the Eugene Public Library and organized programs in 1993 we were invited to the University of Washington Tikku who were an international audience for the National storytelling conference where we gave an hour and a half performance workshop over 24 years about 200 tellers
Tolls over 70,000 students in the schools plus adult groups a story has its own kind of meaning its own kind of logic in the words of the Maori storyteller the story brings the breath of life the spirit of life the word of life it flies to you and you and you always the word thank you
