Heads or Tales

Arts At School

Yesterday, I met with two teachers to plan the daylong residency I’ll be doing centered around The Cow Tail Switch at St. Joseph Montessori School. I’m excited to begin. Earlier this week I read about a great program in the magazine Teaching Artist. This program is centered in Mankato, Minnesota and is directed at schools that have no or little arts available in their programs. The schools apply, and the artists are drawn from several organizations throughout the city. A three-year commitment is made between the artist and the school. For the first year the artist and involved teachers meet and work to plan a curriculum-centered experience. The artist provides teacher workshops and leads the program. The second year, the teacher leads the program and the artist is the mentor and observer and for the third year, the teacher implements the program.

There’s so much that I like about this model. I like that the art is tied to the general ongoing curriculum. I like that the program requires teacher and artist to work together and that the teacher has the opportunity and motivation to make art.

Here’s what teaching artist Armando Gutierrez said when he was asked if he was apprehensive about programs like this making teaching artists obsolete, “it’s just the opposite. Training more practitioners - teachers who not only teach but also make art and have a deep understanding of art—only increases demand for arts experiences. Teachers understand the importance of art in a direct, hands-on way. And it generates more work and more opportunity for artists.”

Middle School Math Recommendation

I remember as a kid struggling with math. For some reason, I began improve when I studied to take the GRE. I actually enjoyed putting all those facts back in my head.

Recently, I ordered Mathematwist Number Tales From Around The World by T. V. Padma, and today, I spent the afternoon reading and working thorough the stories and the theories behind them. Each of the fourteen stories is a folktale from such places as Vietnam, India and Armenia. Some of the stories I was familiar with, but, even being familiar with the story, the author’s treatment and explanations afterwards were a pleasure. For example, after the story “Dividing A Goose”, a Jewish tale in which a peasant outwits a rich man and is able to give his own family a good dinner, Ms Padma talks a little about the ancient symbols for addition and subtraction. Did you know that Egyptian hieroglyphics show subtraction by depicting a man walking away? She also talks about the oldest Indian mathematical text. It was found in a field written on treebark.

Mathmatwist would be a great asset for a middle school math class (6th and 7th grades). The stories are engaging and the explanations are clear and never stuffy. There’s even a play to read out loud.

The book is only $8.50 and, even though it was published in India,can be easily ordered from her website www.cliofindia.com/padma/children.htm. The mailing address is in the U. S.

Participation Stories- The Great Big Enormous Turnip

Yesterday, my friend Bev came over to pick up the books to use with the Columbus Story Adventures project, and we chatted awhile. She’s going to tell stories at a school with four first grades and wanted to have children come up and help her tell a story. We talked about using the story of The Great Big Enormous Turnip. That story, about cooperation and the power of the weakest, is so much fun to tell with kindergarten to second graders, and it provides good experience with spatial relationships, sequencing and body control as well.

The turnip story is about an old lady who plants a tiny seed. The seed grows into a huge turnip, which she can’t pull out. Her grandson, granddaughter, the dog, the cat and finally the mouse help. It ‘s the mouse’s final pull that does the trick. When I tell the story, I’m the grandma and I call on children to come up and help. I grab the turnip around its huge imaginary leaves. The children, each in their turn, grab each other and then me until we make a long line of helpers. Each time someone new comes on the scene, we count to three and pull on the turnip. When we are finally successful, after the mouse comes, we make a big circle and pantomime picking up the big turnip. We place it in the pot for soup. The audience stirs, and we stir. Our turnip soup is “the best soup ever.” Finally, everyone receives a round of applause.

To do that story successfully, the children have the challenge of holding onto the child in front and pulling without pulling anyone over. Everyone must also pull a little harder at the end. As the different characters come up to take their place in the drama, I hold my hand over the head of each group and the audience recites the order of helpers with me. We say, “ the mouse (or mice..it’s fun to have more than one of everything), grabbed the cat who grabbed the dog who grabbed the granddaughter who grabbed the grandson who grabbed the grandma.” I’m always amazed at the control the kids involved use to help pull the turnip and to make a circle, lift the huge turnip and drop it in the soup.

It’s even more fun to follow up with the book…

Here are some versions of that old story:

The Enormous Carrot by Vladimir Vasilevich Vagin—great illustrations and simply told.

A Little Story About A Big Turnip Tatiana Zunshine

The Enormous Turnip by Aleksey Tolstoy – This old story made for beginning readers

Grandma Lena’s Big Ol’ Turnip by Denia Hester – This one has a city setting and a soul food result.

Sleeping Beauty

This week I continued working with that great group of kindergarteners. Over five days, I told three stories and we spent some time with each story, including writing a giant letter to the giant in Jack and the Bean Stalk. On the last day, I told the story of Briar Rose or Sleeping Beauty. Briar Rose is the name give by the Grimm Brothers. I’m not sure where Sleeping Beauty came into being. I wonder if it is from Disney. Following the story, I taught them the song called Thorn Rosa. It’s an easy tune and allows the whole story to be acted out while singing. At first we were a little tentative, especially since my singing voice takes a few runs to get going, but by the time we sang it a few times with boys and girls switching all the roles, we were into it.

My source for the song is Viola Spolin’s box of acting cards entitled The Theater Game File. That box of theater ideas was not cheap, but it has been helpful in storytelling camp and with the kindergarteners as well. I just grabbed the card and referred to it as we sang. There are other sources for this great song on the Internet, however. Just type in “Thorn Rosa” and song. The best site is DLTK. (WWW.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/sleeping-beauty/mlyrics.htm) Often when I try clicking on an URL, it doesn’t work, so look down the list for DLTK…the DLTK site includes the tune as well as the words. After we sang and sang, I shared Trina Hyman’s book Sleeping Beauty. Her illustrations are haunting and the kids loved them.

Let me know if you use the song or share the book and what you do with them.

Kindergarten Residency and Story Necklaces

This week I’m with St. Joe’s kindergarteners. Monday we started out in the gym, but because a fire alarm was pending, we went outside in the sunshine. There are 12 of us, including their teacher and me. Really …a group that’s not too big and not too small. I told them the story of how Rabbit lost his tail after being tricked to stick it in the ice to catch fish by fox. Rabbit is rescued by owl and other animals. Yesterday, Tuesday, I asked a very quiet girl to pick a friend and show us where our stage should be. Together they made a rabbit’s frozen lake from a circle on the gym floor and, using the basketball free throw boundaries, declared the boundaries of our stage. We acted the story out a second time. For this run through, almost everyone wanted to be fox. We only had two rabbits. Afterwards, I used an idea I learned from Lyn Ford. We made story necklaces.

Here’s how to do it:

1.Decide on the important parts of the story. I used: beginning, rabbit, fox, fish, ice, owl, animals and end. Using a bag of buttons (see below for more about them)I gave each story section its own button shape. The beginning is a triangle. Rabbit is an animal shape. Fox is a square and so on.

2.Using 11.5 by 17 inch paper, draw or Xerox the symbols with the corresponding words underneath in order on paper. Make them real size so the children can match with their own buttons. Also make enough copies so that each child will have their own.

3.Go over the story and show what the buttons stand for. Ask the children to match the symbols on their own paper.

4.Using jewelry twine, create a necklace. The necklace must be strung starting at the end of the story.
so that the children can retell it from left to right. When the necklaces are strung. The children can tell the story to you. They can take it home and tell it to their family.

There are so many ways to use that story necklace:

The children now have a visual representation of their story to take home and share.
The paper and parts can be put in the classroom to practice.
Words can be written under the symbols so that they can be copied.
Give each child a button and see if they can line up according to where their part of the story occurs.
Tell the story in an ensemble having each child tell the part their button represents.

Resources: I got the buttons from Oriental Trading Company. They are plastic, cheap and colorful. The bag I chose has a triangle, rectangle, square, a small animal head, and a bow. The fish and the animals in the story were smaller filler beads, also cheap. I also bought the jewelry cord from Oriental Trading Company…it’s black. I put a piece of masking tape on the end of each section of cord to give it a point so the cord wouldn’t fray and to make it easier to thread through the buttonholes.

A good resource for the story is Children Tell Stories by Hamilton and Weiss

Even better would be to decide on the elements of the story as a group and have the children select their own symbols. Oriental Trading Company has some very nice animal beads and buttons. I didn't have enough of several of the buttons, and I was worried that the children might spend precious time arguing over what they wanted.

Storytelling and Mathematics

Yesterday, I spent an hour and a half waiting in a doctor’s office. The up side is that I had plenty of uninterrupted time to get a good look at Oral Storytelling and Teaching Mathematics: Pedagogical and Multicultural Perspectives by Michael Stephen Schiro with Doris Lawson. Sage Publications published OSTATM in 2006. Mr. Schiro, once Chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Boston College, is currently professor of mathematics at that institution.

I got a used copy from Barnes and Noble for $30. It can sell for $60 when it’s new. The book is an explanation of how two epic stories, one entitled "The Wizard’s Tale" and the second called “The Egypt Story", were used in Doris Lawson’s math classes when she was a fourth grade and a sixth grade teacher. Epic stories are very long stories told over a period of time. Each story lasted about eleven class periods.

Mr. Schiro, the author of Ms. Lawson’s stories, is very careful to explain why storytelling is important in teaching and particularly why long-term or epic stories are particularly effective. He describes each unit clearly and in detail. The final chapters contain information and studies supporting using this type of storytelling in a mathematics classroom and it benefit to different school age populations.

A CD accompanies the book. The CD includes the complete text of the two stories plus all additional material needed to do the stories with a class.

The book is a great affirmation of the importance of storytelling in school, with its emphasis on teaching math. I found the text heavy to wade through, however, because of its completeness. Because I have done some work with my friend Rita, a sixth and seventh grade math teacher, I skipped to the parts that I felt would interest her. The CD, in particular, brings the whole picture together. It is very approachable and very readable. When I share this concept with Rita, I will probably send her the CD and talk about the rest as needed.

Last year, I told several Halloween stories to Rita’s classes, and we worked math problems into the stories. Mr. Schiro would say, I think, that the experience could be improved by creating one long story in which characters are revealed and the plot evolves and time is allowed for more involvement with the project. As a storyteller, I would love such a collaboration. Oral Storytelling and Teaching Mathematics, however, is written for a classroom teacher to do it all.

Mr. Schiro’s ideas remind me of the big stories in the Montessori classrooms. Those stories are almost biblical in their presentation, and the curriculum and manipulative materials are built around them. I have only seen those stories presented once or twice. I was a preschool kindergarten teacher, and those stories don’t come into play until the Primary grades, but they are used all the way up through Middle School. The stories are so critical to that curriculum, I wonder how the teachers see them. Are they magical beginnings or are they something to be endured because they are dictated. I’m wondering because I know they were told each year, but I don’t remember any fan fare on the days of their telling.

Jan.6 08- Here's a comment on the book by my teacher friend Rita
I've looked over the book, but there was no way I could plow through and read it all. The CD is nice in that it gives teachers the opportunity to easily copy the basic stories and lessons.

I feel the book does offer practical applications of math concepts via the stories. The typical word problems normally offered in math classes don't engage students because they're simply snipets. Longer stories do tend to draw students in and make them feel part of the storyline. These types of stories would help kids not only to remember the plot and characters from day to day, but they'd also motivate students to want to solve the characters' problems. I feel it would work in a classroom because the students, especially the younger ones, would care about the characters and want to help them through each dilemma.

As far as the actual book is concerned, I feel it's dry, redundant, and not reader-friendly in the parts where the theory is offered. It's a good idea, but I wanted the authors to get to the point and stick to it! Teachers already know most of the information they were trying to impart in the theory portion!

Talking To The Librarians

Yesterday, Frank and Cathy Jo and I went to the semi annual Columbus librarian’s meeting. It was so nice to see my old librarian friends. Our job was to show those school librarians the benefit of hiring storytellers and to emphasize that the Storytellers of Central Ohio would be a good place to start. The superintendent told Frank that the librarians needed to bring more folks like us into the schools. What could be better? I came away, however, feeling as if I was swimming in mud with a voice speaking from down inside a well.

Last week, at Artists In Schools night, I was able to talk about being a storyteller and say something meaningful about storytelling and myself, but not this time at the librarian’s meeting. The trouble was that Frank invited me. He was in charge, and I only prepared my part. I didn’t prepare in my head for what we might say at the end. What might be said at the beginning, and how we might handle questions. I didn’t do it because that was Frank’s job, so I put the focus in its default place, which was on myself. That’s why, when we left, I felt like I was swimming in mud and my voice felt as if it was coming from down in a well. I didn’t make myself part of the bigger picture, part of the purpose.

I just finished a great article by David Novak in a journal called Storytelling, Self and Society. In the article he talks about a performance given by storyteller Gwenda LedBetter. He says she did such a good job because even though the entire evening of stories was about herself, even though storytelling is about conversation, compared to the more formal theater, Ms. Ledbetter entered her performance as the teller of her own story. The story and its telling became the focus and she the author. He said that if you talked to Ms. LetBetter before or after the performance, you wouldn’t know she was a storyteller.

“At age 76, Gwenda LedBetter demonstrates that the art of storytelling is the art of becoming a storyteller. For, even as she shares herself with us, she becomes a storyteller. By beginning in an ordinary prosaic voice and transforming into a poetic voice, Gwenda transforms from an ordinary person talking into a formal storyteller, conjuring.”

I think that when we spoke to the librarians, I forgot that I needed to shed my daily life and take on some of what storytelling is. Frank and I and another storyteller are due to talk again at the OCEA convention in Cincinnati. There I will have the challenge of seeing all my friends from St. Joseph School plus the school librarian bunch. This time, I’ll work at conjuring.

Kiss The Bride

Take a look at the new comic Nelson drew and I wrote. When that event happened at our wedding 39 years ago, I thought I would never find it funny. Not ever. Now, when I talk about that incident, I laugh so hard that tears roll down my face and I have to take deep breaths to finish. I think it just goes to show that out of the greatest conflicts can come the best stories. This was more of an internal conflict…for each of us. The drawing part took Nelson a long time because he was embarrassed. I told him that that he shouldn’t do it if he didn’t want to, but he finished a few days ago, and I posted it. Just click on each drawing in turn to enlarge and read it. If you want to see a picture of Nelson, click on the comic above called "The Board Meeting".

Is Someone Out There Watching?

Could it be that things happen for a reason? That maybe someone way out there is watching.

A month ago, I was in the doctor’s office for a checkup. When he asked for a urine sample, there was blood in it. After that day, however, all bleeding stopped. The urologist did blood tests, urine tests and scans, only to find nothing. When he looked, however, with his fancy scope, he found a small lesion in my bladder. I had it removed yesterday, and probably will only have to be checked periodically. I may never have followed up on it, if it hadn’t happened in the doctor’s office. Realizing that, I began to wonder if someone is looking out for me.

This story has a twist, and here it is: I was to supposed to have the procedure done a week ago. A week ago, when I showed up early in the morning all washed down with Dial soap, like they told me, and really nervous, the lady at the desk couldn’t find my name. “You’re not on our schedule for today. You’re scheduled for Sept. 12.”

The head nurse came out. She told me I could wait an hour and a half until the urologist's office opened, and they could call. I am not unacquainted with getting dates mixed up and assumed that I had made the mistake, but it wasn’t my error. Both the doctor’s office and the surgery center didn’t send the information needed to do the job that day. That made me wonder about the competency of the center and the doctor, or, perhaps... I wasn’t supposed to be there. The new date was scheduled for yesterday which was Thursday, Sept. 5.

With Thursday looming closer and closer, I received a call on Tuesday from Jim Flanagan at the Southern Ohio Storytelling Festival, asking me if I could fill in from Thursday to Saturday for a participant who was unable to come. I told Jim that, after being put to sleep and having someone dig around my insides on the day before I was to perform, I would be in less than top shape. I declined, and THAT made me very unhappy. He did, however, ask me to be part of the festival lineup for next year. Being asked for next year made me really happy, but, I pined to take this year’s opportunity. God knows what will happen by next year.

Being asked on Tuesday to jump in to the festival on Thursday was daunting, but I was ready to jump in. I could already hear the brakes on the school buses as they pulled up to the theater, and it was exciting. Realistically, however, two days wasn't enough time for me to prepare for such a big event. I would need to revisit old stories and spiff them up, create some new ones and plan which would go best where. I couldn’t have done that adequately in two days, but I would have tried. If it hadn't been for the doctor, the office mixup and my bladder, I would have been there.

So... Maybe, my grandma, the writer, or my dad, the editor, or my sister or mom, worked some magic with the scheduling mess and even with the detection of that lesion. Could it be that things do happen for a reason and perhaps someone from beyond this life occasionally has us in their sights?

The Dowd Center

Beverly Comer and I sat across the table from Gale Hacker yesterday in the central big room of the Dowd Center. The three of us were discussing bringing our group, Columbus Story Adventures, to Gale’s homeless kids at the Dowd. Gale has been involved with that center for a whole lot of years and, in addition to providing an enriching learning environment, has transformed the building from a dark, rundown warehouse to a vibrant building full of light and art. A huge mural about peace filled the back wall of the big room. The newest mural, located just by the front stairs, was filled with kids learning. Each year, an artist helps the children plan and paint a new mural.

“I want Columbus Story Adventures to come from September until, at least, December, “ Gail said.
Every week? I asked, my eyes widening. “CSA usually comes for six-week increments.
“Oh yes,” said Gale, “we have money for that. If we can get more grant money, I want you to come through the spring and the summer.”

I had to pause and allow delight to find good places to settle in my body. Gale knows the power of the oral story, and she was acting on it. We will have a chance to build a story relationship each week with her group of 60 k- 5th graders over a long period of time.

The homeless population is changing, Gail told us, as she walked us to the door. She said that it’s growing. When she started working as director of the Dowd, 33% of homeless people consisted of families with children, but now it’s up to 66%. “I wish I could help them all,” she said, “ but I can’t. I can only take care of the ones who are with me.”

I’m so glad she’s bringing a regular diet of oral stories for the children she has in her care. So many good things will happen when the children and their teachers sit down to listen. Leo Botstein in his essay in A Light In Dark Times says that “What the arts do is create something that does not already exist, that is not predictable or entirely rational, which forces us to talk to ourselves and to other people in new ways.” We have been working with Gail and the Dowd Center for two summers. Now we’ll be coming every week. I can’t wait.