Teacher workshop on the art of Storytelling

To quote Robin Moore, " Inside each of us is a natural-born storyteller waiting to be released".

The teachers of the Pre-primary and Primary of The Indian School and The Indian School- Second Shift, attended a storytelling workshop by Ms Seema Wahi Mukherjee, international storyteller, coach and educational consultant, on 30 June 2022.

Ms Wahi defined a storyteller as a sympathetic listener who can listen to the underlying emotions in a story. The ebullient coach asked her audience members to share their favourite cartoon characters and expectations from the workshop. She wrote their inputs on the whiteboard, promising to fulfil all their expectations by the end of the 4-hour session!

Ms Wahi shared a few storytelling techniques, the first of which was the Do as I do, say as I say, in which she used her hands as props to narrate the story of the Two Goats on the Bridge. This technique helped transform a simple story narration into an engaging activity and conveyed that a teacher can use her body as a prop. She paired the participants for practice in this technique since practice makes perfect!

Ms Wahi further discussed the storytelling curriculum that includes SICA (Skill Information Concepts and Attitude), which focuses on listening and speaking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills through storytelling. She also discussed several post-narrative activities in detail as they are integral to the art of storytelling.

The international storytelling coach told her audience about some of the different storytelling techniques like a cube with pictures and a one picture story, Kamishibai (A Japanese genre of street theatre and storytelling popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the post-war period) and stringing a story. Ms Wahi narrated the story Math Mela, wherein the teachers learnt how to integrate stories with other subjects like math, science, and social science. The participants also learned how to transform everyday items into beautiful storytelling accessories, for example, a can of washing powder into a talking cat!

The session ended with an engaging activity which taught the teachers how to make different teaching tools to tell stories using hand puppets.

The 4-hour session ended satisfactorily, with the participants energised to implement the techniques learnt in the workshop to make their teaching more effective.

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