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Storytelling

Storytelling is a communication process in which at least one person tells a story to at least one listener using oral or signed language. Storytellers usually narrate stories in person directly to an audience although they can also do so indirectly through media such as radio, TV, computer, CD, and DVD. Storytelling calls into play visual, cognitive, and emotional content in the minds of both storyteller and audience, giving teachers a flexible tool for engaging students and allowing gifts, creativity, and talent to surface.

The word storyteller can designate a teller of a people's history or a performer who seeks to elevate narration to an art form by using verbal and nonverbal communication skills and carefully chosen language, sometimes improvised. The nonverbal communication aspects (gestures, postures, sounds, facial and vocal expression) play a large part in communicating meaning interpreted by the teller for an audience. For these reasons, a writer who writes for a reader is a storywriter rather than a storyteller. This entry describes the roots and renaissance of storytelling, and discusses storytelling in education

Roots of Storytelling

Stories can be true or fictional, exaggerated, humorous, fantasies, personal accounts, and traditional tales such as legends, myths, epics, fables, folktales, and fairy tales from various cultures. Elders across the ages have relied on oral tradition to transmit from one generation to the next the collective learning, wisdom, and histories of their people. Religions of the world have relied on stories and parables told by their shamans, priests, healers, rabbis, and ministers to convey deeply held spiritual roots. Rural villagers still gather to listen to tales that entertain and convey important information and moral codes, which have guided people throughout the ages. Traditionally, in Ghana, West Africa, a griot, the storyteller-historian, helps villagers preserve storytelling. Teachers and parents everywhere use storytelling to help children develop empathy and to recall content by using stories in various formats.

But in 20th-century United States, with the advent of television and access to books, the live storyteller lost prominence, except for some librarians and rural tellers. Storytelling appeared destined to become a quaint folk art. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, storytelling began a rebirth.

Storytelling Renaissance

Jimmy Neil Smith, a teacher of journalism, grasped the value of storytelling as an art form and as a tool for literacy and cultural transmission. In 1973 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, Smith organized the first National Storytelling Festival, which signaled a national movement to preserve and perpetuate the art of storytelling. During the 1990s and 2000s, festivals and competitions expanded rapidly and included more diverse voices. Although storytelling was considered a form of theatrical arts, professional storytellers along with the help of the National Storytelling Network and the International Storytelling Center claimed storytelling an art form in its own right. The oral tradition began to be included in school-enrichment clusters, artist-in-education programs, and several graduate college curriculums. A National Youth Storytelling Showcase gave students a stage on which to perform their stories. Yet, the larger promise of storytelling as a fertile resource for identifying and supporting students' creativity, talent development, and learning was only beginning to be studied and understood.

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