We are a species of storytellers. It’s one of the main
things that separate us from all the other animals on this planet. Since
mankind started walking upright we have tried to make sense of the world though
telling tales. The first homo-sapiens gestured wildly across the pains and into
the sky trying to understand that which was around them, the Greeks had a cast
of Gods who helped them learn about the world and Elizabethan explorers coaxed
their crews across the ocean to the edge of the known world with tall-tales of
the riches that awaited them on the other side of the horizon.
When we are younger we are taught through stories. We learn
how to count, read and our common sense from books with colourful animals who
sing and dance their way through a narrative that has educational undertones.
Dutiful parents help us understand the world by relating our experiences to
bed-time stories or nursery rhymes. However, when a student reaches secondary
school the story-teller is silenced in the teacher with the ridged focus of a
curriculum of facts and assessments that see narrative as an inferior cousin.
Why undo all this good work that the previous educators have done? A student’s
brain is ready to receive knowledge through created characters and wild and
wonderful worlds and sensational stories.
Why suppress the instinct we have been
building for years to be attuned to learn in narrative?
Story has the power to capture a classroom like nothing
else. The most reactive of science experiments might bring about a gasp of awe,
but the silence after a well thought through adventure is the only thing I have
seen bring a class to a long completive silence. I will apologize now, as an
English and Drama teacher most of my examples come from one of those subjects.
I hope that the scientists, mathematicians and my fellow humanities teachers
find some use in these examples, but I’ve got nothing specific for you to just pick
up and take away from this, it’s more a call-to-arms for the storytellers in us
all. Also, I’m not saying that this works for all classes or even all students.
I wouldn’t suggest trying this out on a KS4 class unless you’re confident that
they are going to “get” it.
Firstly, telling a story is a daunting thing, I understand
that. I know it takes confidence to stand up in-front of thirty kids and begin
engaging them full stop; to be responsible for making what you are delivering
into a narrative adds to the pressure, but like all things it takes time and
practice. If you’re new to the idea of using story in the classroom pick a
group that you know would be sympathetic should you stumble or lose your way in
the quagmire of words in your head. A group whose response is: “What happened
next Miss?” is a far better testing ground than one who will ignore your
struggle.
That’s exactly what happened the first time I tried to use
stories in the classroom. I was trying to get the class to think about what
they might do when they leave school – we were working on improving their
persuasive language skills and I’d lost the plot with no-one engaged or really
bothered about learning what a rhetorical question might or might not be. I
rather stupidly told them that the jobs that they might be doing when they
leave might not have even been invented yet and they needed to pay attention as
persuading people might help them secure one. A rather cheeky young man asked: “Like what?” My lesson immediately
changed. “Like, you might be asked to sell the moon.” It was all they needed;
they became future estate agents for our nearest celestial body each with their
own idea for what they would do up there from a cheese factory to a theme park.
Better yet at the end of the session each could tell me what a rhetorical
question was.
Although this session could be seen as simply using the
mantle of the expert I believe it was the narrative behind it that really
captured them. We forget that kids are actually very clever and possibly even
more attuned to when they are being patronised than adults. Simply telling them
that they are “experts” does nothing for them. They see right through our game.
They know that it’s still a lesson, we know that it’s still a lesson and the
boredom remains for many. Give them a back-story that they can believe in and
they have something to grab a-hold of and suspend their disbelief. It’s the
same reason that they will sit through an entire movie or slog through a
repetitive video-game: they have a story to chase. A reason in their mind to be
doing it.
Before long the process of teaching itself had become a
story. I would welcome my classes first as an army telling them: “Today we’re an army pushing back the forces
of ignorance.” Then they became the crew of the SS. Learning setting off
for the island of knowledge; then a congregation worshiping at the altar of
studiousness. At first they thought that it was weird, but after a while they
started to giggle every now and again as I added more to the metaphors – the
ship had sails that needed hoisting, the congregation had to bow their heads
before class and offer a prayer to the Gods of Understanding and the army had
to sharpen their swords (take out their pens). For some of the younger students
I even brought in props and had them act out the beginning of the lesson with
me. The SS. Learning now had a “wheel” (a hula-hoop) that I was steering the
ship with and I had them set the classroom up by doing the rigging or mopping
the poop deck. Immediately a mundane task brought life to the lesson and I had
captured their imagination.
Soon I couldn’t stop myself and
every lesson became a story in my mind. A rather weak year 7 set had to study
poetry. Deciding that they should look at Dr Seuss (accessible for them) I
racked my brain for how to turn The
Battle of the Butter into a narrative. The classroom became the tiny nation
of Elizabethland sandwiched between the Yooks and the Zooks who were about to
go to war with one another. The class were my ministers in charge of looking at
the “intelligence” (the poem) that we had found out about our neighbours – it
was up to them how they did it. At the end of the session we had understood
everything that was going on and I explained that this very thing would have
been happening during the Cold War in Europe as tensions rose between East and
West. For my final act I even produced a piece of the Berlin wall that my
father had given me. They were hooked and wanted to do it again so I found them
The Lorax and asked them to discover
why it had disappeared. The same response occurred when I began to tell them
about the environment. Poetry became fun.
Drama lent itself easily to storytelling. I brought Tsotsi’s
bag into the classroom - this was simply an old handbag that I acquired. I
concocted a story about a lonely old Buddhist monk who lives high up on Mt Fuji
who holds a bag in which he has everything in the universe (where Tsotsi was is
an entirely different question). I then told them that they could pull anything
out of Tsotsi’s bag so that they could use it in their performance to the rest
of the class. A potentially boring exercise focusing on mime and projection now
had a purpose for them and they took to it immediately. For some of the more
gifted students that I use this exercise with I now ask them to pull out an
intangible thing such as an emotion – they love the abstract nature of the
idea.
Although very specific examples to my own subjects I hope
that some of the ideas might be transferable. You might teach sustainable
energy in science by telling them about a far off world that only uses solar
energy and the students have to advise them which new source to use as they
learn that they are about to be plunged into darkness. History, Geography and
R.E teachers have a plethora of material that they could mine that I’m very
jealous of and Technology teachers could make each project for some fantastical
company that has a need for wooden pencil boxes or pastries.
You may still be reading this unconvinced that this will
work, but all great heroes have their moment of refusal. Right now you’re Luke
with his lightsaber in his hands who in the next scene will walk away. The
funny thing about heroes is that no matter what once they receive the call to
adventure they are off on their journey. The Galactic Empire will still have
its Death Star hanging in the sky. The question is, will you be the one who
helps destroy it, or still stuck on Tatooine tending to Uncle Ben’s farm?
