Teachers as Storytellers- teacher workshop

We have all grown up on stories narrated to us by our grandparents, parents and other elders in the family. We all remember lying back how we beside our dear grandmas, as they led us away into the realms of fantasy.

The wit of Birbal, the stories of Vikram-Betaal and many more. These ageless tales helped us learn some important lessons of our lives. They taught us about the good and the bad and also played a part in shaping us.

Today, with modern tools of technology, the modes of traditional storytelling have become less common and the medium is getting reinvented, as it were, to match the times.

The teachers of The Indian School attended a workshop on storytelling organised by the organisation, Story ghar at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts.

We started with a 'warm-up' meditation which drew us to focus on the subject and built an ambience, so to say. We felt connected to the teacher and each other.

We went on to refresh ourselves with the speaker, on the importance of storytelling at multiple planes. We then discussed the use of story telling as a tool in our teaching process. We analysed with examples, how common topics like hygiene, respect for elders, being positive and values like truth can be easily delivered with the use of this medium.

In fact we concluded that stories are a good way to make students aware of the many aspects of life in general. Different activities were conducted for the teachers namely: (a) Voice modulation using emotion (b) Mimicking an animal and guessing its name (c) using the three-lined story with a situation, problem and solution (d) Role play where a story is enacted by the teacher. The teachers present were divided into groups to prepare and present a story which could lead upto the topic to be taught. The follow up activities required to be done with the children with such an exercise, were also discussed.

Amongst children, stories can elicit many emotions-laughter, tears, pride, indignation, etc. Now it was time to learn how to practically apply the technique in the classroom. We witnessed demonstrations by some of the teachers present, which were entertaining whilst being educative. We saw how a topic can be introduced with a clue, leading to the stringing of an entire story by the children on the topic. By default the topic can be assimilated by the class.

The group discussion, at the end, resolved our queries. We came away equipped with the tools of storytelling, ready to effectively apply them with our students.

We conducted a similar workshop at School with teachers of Nursery, KG, and classes 1 and 2, to share our learning. It was a satisfying experience to pass on the knowledge to our colleagues and we now await interacting with them again to share their outcomes.