Teaching character by storytelling

Posted by Permission of The Giraffe Project, From the Giraffe K-2 Curriculum, © 1998 The Giraffe Project.

The Giraffe Heroes Program teaches by story-telling. People have known for millennia that stories stick in the mind, even when the listener might brush off any principles embedded in those stories if they were just rules and admonitions. The love of stories may be programmed into our genes, going back to the first campfires, where people gathered to tell each other about their days, and their ancestors' days.

The kids you work with will soak up the principles of living bravely, ethically, and compassionately, without your hitting them over the head with those concepts. Understanding falls out of the stories, all over their lives. You'll find this a profoundly effective approach to character education, one that presents no need to debate "values" or "situational ethics" or any of the other bugaboos that so distress communities.

From "Ready, Set . . ." in the K-2 Curriculum

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Copyright © 1999 The Giraffe Project, all rights reserved.
Please contact The Giraffe Project for permission to reprint or distribute.

Posted with permission by New Horizons for Learning
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