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"Telling Tales:" Storytelling Can Promote Learning Connections" What did you do last summer? It is a question asked many times during the fall when families gather back in their communities and schools. "Did you go away?" "How far is away?" "It’s when you get on an airplane." "No, you can go in a car for a long time because I did." This is typical of the fall conversations of young children as they find links between their own summer experiences and those of their peers. Young children are fascinated by each other’s summer stories. Sometimes they repeat what each other says. Sometimes they talk of family members, the new baby, the cousin they rarely see, how they played with their aunt’s dog and, yes, it was "very big." Words that speak of size and speed are frequently mentioned. The airplane did go "2000 miles an hour" and the pool was "bigger than me at the end." Young children already have a sense about what kind of information will hold their audience. Family trips, long or short, are true investments and provide many learning connections. Young children have a well-known fascination for facts which frequently become powerful tools in discussions. But I am always surprised at just how much experiential information children store away and pull out weeks, months or even years later. The places they have experienced provide hooks for further learning. Even the simplest of trips becomes memories to which the children can connect new pieces of information. The bear that wandered past the picnic site in the Smokies. The "grits" that came with breakfast on the road trip to Florida. All these acquire additional meanings as they "fit" with later experiences, and with appropriate revisiting, they can become part of the story of our children’s lives. As parents, we can use our own storytelling as a way to relive some of those special days. Children love to hear stories about things that really happened, especially in places they have visited and known. The repetition of these stories by adults in the family provides valuable learning opportunities for children. Every Christmas, my Uncle Charlie would relate the escapades of an old London wagoner who came through our English rural village to collect goods to take to market. We knew the story so well that we corrected him when he used a new or unfamiliar word, but we were always caught up in the mood of the story, the tone of his voice and the excitement of what we knew was to come. He told us many good stories. Some of them had happened many, many years before and had been handed down through generations of villagers. Some of them were closely linked to particular places--woods, fens and lanes that we had walked and explored. Some were tied to particular seasonal events, such as the Horkey suppers held on the day the last wheat was harvested in September. Other stories explained the names of things such as "pattens," special shoes that were worn by the people who lived in the watery fens of East Anglia. Such stories might seem exotic now, but they all began as a simple retelling of someone’s recent experience. How exotic might your own accounts of a long car ride sound as retold by some distant descendant--and how informative! For very young children, these "real life" stories are what allow them to make sense of and use their own experiences which might otherwise pass unremarked. But such family storytelling is not just for the very young. My own children, now in early adolescence, still like to hear the stories that begin, "Remember when...." Some of these retell events in their own younger childhood, but others are stories from my childhood. The day my uncle went to the seaside in his slippers. The day Granny’s tossed pancakes stuck to the ceiling. These are the kind of stories everyone in the extended family can tell because they become a part of a tradition at family gatherings. In doing so, they "fill in" our children’s images of who they are and where they fit in a larger world. And one day, who knows, knowing that the English toss pancakes at the same time of year as New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras may cause them to make an historical connection that otherwise may have gone unnoticed. Rives Collins, drama professor at Northwestern University, reminds parents, teachers and children that "we use stories everyday to make sense of our lives, to share our experiences and to share ourselves." Storytelling offers us all the opportunity to experience the world from a different perspective. Sometimes we explore the story from the point of view of another character and in putting ourselves in the shoes of another, we see things differently. Here a storytelling skill transfer into a life skill, where understanding different points of view is essential to creativity and flexibility and encourages empathy on the part of the young listener. In an over-programmed day or week, remember those summer days by taking time out for storytelling. You do not have to be great at it. Just start reminiscing about what you did on vacation or tell a story about a trip you all took years ago. If you leave out an event or do not resolve the plight of a character, have no fear as you child will remind you. Children are wonderful prompters. Get the Uncle Charlie in your family to keep telling his stories, too. These all become both hooks for new learning and the basis for those future stories to be told by your grandchildren. Not only are they educational, they can also make summer last longer, too!
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