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Learning and Growing Through Stories
A teacher once said to his 3rd grade students, "Do you want me to read you a story or tell you a story?" "Oh tell us a story," they exclaimed, "because then we can see into your eyes."
Connection. Communion. The opportunity to engage.
Stories are the medium through we can communicate meaningfully with each other. Our wisdom, our intuitive knowing is imbedded in the stories we tell. Just after our need for food and even before our need for love, we have a need for story.
Storytelling is the oldest form of communication. The first thing people do upon meeting each other is begin telling stories. A wise teacher once said, "The shortest distance between two people is a story." Another teacher was asked by his frustrated students one day, "Master, we ask to hear the truth and all you tell us are stories." The Master smiled and replied, "The shortest distance between a person and the truth is a story. "
Stories invest our lives with meaning, they develop and express our creativity. They help us to laugh at ourselves. They give us the strength to face life's difficult moments. They connect us more vitally with ourselves and each other and they turn ordinary moments into extraordinary ones.
"If there were no stories there would be no world because the world is made up of stories," said a child when asked the question. "What are stories?" Think about it. We create with our stories. We imagine what is possible, we make up a story about it. We bring that story into existence. Our words, our images are just that powerful.
According to brain/mind research, we organize information in story form. It is how we make sense of the world around us. And it is how we communicate that understanding to another. Stories allow us to bypass the linear and access whole brain learning.
When I tell you a story, I let you into my world. I cannot tell you who I am without telling you a story. Stories illustrate the text of our lives. They go beyond facts into feelings. They engage the whole of us--our minds and our hearts. By storying my life, that is, by telling about the incidents that give my life meaning I make sense out of it. I begin to connect the dots of my experience and as I do, gracefully, artistically, memorably, I invite you to go inside and begin to connect your own dots to make sense out of your own experience.
Stories beget stories
The universal themes of life are found in our stories about birth and death, triumph and disappointment, courage and despair. When you touch me with your story, my world expands. We make a human connection. Through that connection, I access more of myself. Parts of myself I may have forgotten are awakened because of your story. I claim lost parts of myself.
One day during a school residency, I was working with a little girl I'll call Annie, who was having trouble remembering the story I taught the children. Her storytelling partner brought her to me and Annie's chin was quivering. "I just can't remember, what comes next. I just can't remember," she cried with her eyes now filling with tears. "Do you like to draw, Annie?", I asked. "Yes, I love to draw." "Good. Why don't you draw as much of the story as you can remember and bring it to me this afternoon in the library."
I asked the librarian for her help in making sure that Annie and I would not be disturbed. Annie arrived at the library with her story map clutched to her chest and her shoulders hunched. I took her to a table in the far corner of the library. "Annie", I said, "let's take a nice deep breath together." We took a deep breath and her shoulders expanded to let the air in. "Now Annie, just tell me the story as you have drawn it here." In a voice that was just one level up from a whisper she began to tell me the story. When she made a wonderful gesture, or used descriptive language, I would comment, not to distract her but to encourage her. When she came to the end of the drawings but not to the end of the story, she stopped. "That's all I got done," she said.
"Annie, that's wonderful, and do you know what?" I said leaning forward pretending that I was peering inside of her head. "What?" she asked. "I think I see the rest of the story inside your head. Why don't you close your eyes, imagine the story up to the point that you've drawn it, and see if any more of it comes to you. She closed her eyes and she relaxed. After a few seconds she began to describe the story images that were appearing on her "screen." She went all the way to the end, embellishing those parts that were particularly vivid in her imagination.
No sooner had she finished than her entire affect changed. Her face was radiant. She immediately jumped into my lap, threw her arms around me and began to tell me a new story. Her story. What things she liked in school, what she wanted to be when she grew up. She told of her dream to become a photographer and why. She wanted to be a writer, and at that moment she wanted to be storyteller, too.
I said "Annie you can be all those things. And I want you to write down your dreams on a piece of paper and give me a copy and keep the original for yourself. And let's put them way a in a safe place and every now and you read your list and so will I. Imagine yourself being and doing all these things: taking pictures, traveling to far away places, writing books, telling stories. Make up a story as if it had actually happened. See it, feel it, smell it, taste it and touch it. And over time, you will become the story you tell. And every time I think of you, I will tell your story and imagine you living it.
She hugged me and then skipped out of the room--an entirely different child from the one whose chin quivered earlier in the day. It was then that I noticed her teacher standing quietly nearby. I went up to him. "This is the first assignment she has completed in three years. If she drops a pencil, she gets another. If she starts one project, she stops midway and starts another. This is a miracle." "What happened to this child three years ago?" I asked. He answered, "She witnessed her mother being murdered. From that day forward, her life has been fragmented--living first with a grandmother, then with an aunt. She holds herself separate from the other children." Fragmented, like her stories. Until the day Annie was invited to tell a simple story from start to finish in her own way, at her own pace. And she did it. The day she successfully connected the dots of a story outside her experience, she began to connect the dots within. She began to find her way back home to herself. And by so doing, she began the process of healing.
I learned so much about listening that day. I had to slow down to be with Annie. I had to meet her where she was. To be present. Storyteller Jay O'Callahan says that stories come from listeners. "Listeners have hundreds of hands and they pull them out of you." If we have no listener, we have no story. Stories are meant to be shared.
When I tell a story, I let you see who I am, what I value, what is important to me. I not only provide you with a visual map from your door to mine, I invite you in for a cup of tea. Or in the case of a child, a glass of chocolate milk. Our stories become the container to hold our life experience. Without this container, our lives dissipate and the reason for our being is diminished.
What the heart understands today, the head understands tomorrow
Storytelling is the language of the human heart. Stories give us a way to reach out to each other, especially children. They comfort, they nurture, they capture our imaginations, they ignite our creativity, they take us away to a place where "time stands still." They invest our lives with meaning, and render our lives more meaningful.
Michale is a professional storyteller and conference keynoter, who performs storytelling concerts for children and adults and conducts workshops and in-services on creativity and building community through storytelling.
She has been a storytelling consultant to The Boeing Company , Disney Development Corporation, United Way and hundreds of school districts, educational and non profit organizations. She founded the Storytelling Residency program at Children's Hospital in Seattle and founded the Young Storytellers for Peace program which took Northwest children to the former Soviet Union to build bridges of peace through storytelling. She made nine storytelling trips to Russia and starred in a film series on Soviet National television which she was acclaimed by 50 million viewers as the "American Fairy Godmother."
Michale received the Parents Choice silver Honors for her audio tape Tales from Mother Russia and the Paul Harris Award from Rotary International for her humanitarian work with children.
Contact the Author:
Michale Gabriel
1075 Bellevue Way N.E. #477
Seattle, WA 98004
Phone: (425) 455-5071
FAX: (425) 821 5416
michalegabriel@bigplanet.com
Copyright © April 1999 New Horizons for Learning
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