Storytelling as a method in basic education and civic education: A guideline on how to organize a storytelling workshop with adult educators.
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Within StoryComp project, we developed a guidebook in order to motivate and encourage adult educators to practice their skills together. Our guide “How do I organize a storytelling workshop with adult educators?” is a collection of practical exercises of storytelling in different contexts, with direct applicability allowing adult educators to implement peer-to-peer workshops to strengthen and practice storytelling skills together in their own institution or with colleagues from the same field of education (basic or civic education).
To facilitate the use of the activities, we divided them into 7 major themes and for each theme we develop 3 activities accompanied with an explanatory video to make it easier for the adult educator to imagine the implementation within his educational frame.
You can find below the 7 sections with a brief description and find all the videos and the activities on this webpage: https://storycomp.eu/workshop_en/
Selecting stories & competences
How do I find a story that is appropriate for what I want to achieve with my learners? How do I know what a particular story is suitable for? To select stories and competences, there are countless of possibilities. We will present you two examples in this section: one structured and guided and one free and self-organized.
Developing Further Competences
This stage of storytelling begins once the story is told. The challenge is to help learners elaborate further and transfer their competence to other educational or daily life situations.
Identifying storytelling spaces
A story is much more than just the plot. The space, the environment, the atmosphere, all these influence the story, and the audience. This is about how we consciously choose and shape the setting for our story(telling).
Presenting stories
Why do we present stories? It is important to know why you choose the way you want to present your story. And then use everything you have, your voice, your body, your mind, your facial expressions, maybe accessories and tools to appeal to your audience. Or you involve the audience, as part of the story and the storytelling.
Supporting the brain and the memory
To tell a good story, you first have to remember the story. Here you can practice simple techniques to help you remember stories easily. And we guide you on how to use stories to remember everyday things.
Developing storytelling competences
Here you will find activities that specifically develop storytelling skills. This includes biographical storytelling as well as the telling of existing, traditional stories.
Involving listeners
How can you involve your listeners, your learners, in the story to grab their attention, make them actively part of the story and help them develop their senses, imagination and skills?
To be able to test all these activities, each partner had to organize some workshops on the local level with a group of adult educators willing to implement StoryComp method and tools with their adult learners.
Here you can read about the experiences and impressions that the partners of the projects were able to gather in their workshops:
Slovenian Implementation:
The storytelling workshop in Slovenia was really fun and, most importantly, it was extremely well received by adult educators. It's not easy to try something that you think is difficult and for some unknown reason you already convince yourself that you simply won't be good at it, because you just don't “the sense for telling stories” in you. And that's why it's important to start with small steps that people can be convince otherwise. That every adult educator gets a good experience and thus motivation to continue learning. The storytelling method in Slovenian workshop has created a space where nothing is wrong and at the same time only right. So, a place where adult educators, who have not yet encountered the storytelling method in practice, felt safe enough to expose themselves, take risks...and connect. And in this way we created a space where peer to peer learning is possible.
This is our experience. We couldn't ask for more!
The Swedish Implementation
On October 17, seven teachers from Tollare Folk highschool participated in a storytelling workshop. It contained basic and inspirational exercises as well as theory. StoryComp's web and help for adult teachers in storytelling were also presented there. The workshop was very much appreciated, the participants agreed on how good storytelling is for learning and that they should continue to apply it in their classes both in basic and civic teaching.
The more then 150 Swedish Folk high school are for adults and deal with both civic and formal teaching.
The German Implementation
Our colleagues from the language school come into our room for our storytelling workshop with writing materials and want to sit down facing the blackboard. But nothing is prepared there. Everything we need is at the other end of the room in the cosy sofa corner: something to drink and something to snack on. It's 6 o'clock in the evening, we've all had a day at work and are a little tired. But then I tell the first story ... and the tiredness is forgotten. Mine anyway, because I am a little excited. But the faces of the others are also concentrated, completely with me or rather: completely with the story.
We continue with the first activity,” The four squares”, which we do in pairs in a modified form. In this exercise there are two real challenges for the participants: to tell the first story themselves knowing that the protagonist of the story is listening. But the bigger challenge is to listen to their own story told by a colleague without correcting, commenting or adding to it. Along the way, we learn surprising and unexpected things about our colleagues - a wonderful activity for team spirit. Too often we perceive each other only as work people, but there is so much more. So much more inspiring!
At the end of the workshop, creativity is called for once again: we divide the characters from the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood among ourselves and reinvent the story - from the perspectives of the other characters. All by itself, current issues creep into this new story: the multiple burdens on women as family managers, entrepreneurs and as responsible for the care of their parents, in this case their mother (Red Riding Hood’s grandma). The discussion about shooting quotas of wolves in (German) forests. The tabooing of new relationships and love in old age (because the grandmother and the hunter maintain a secret relationship). An exciting approach to accommodate and/or take up topics that are socially or personally relevant.
Unfortunately, we don't really have time to discuss it further in detail. The two hours fly by. The tiredness too. By now it is dark outside, but the energy in the room is palpable. One of the language teachers jumps up and down on the sofa and says enthusiastically, "I actually want to use this in class tomorrow. How can I fit it in? I'll find a way!”
There is almost no better proof that the StoryComp idea works. It didn't feel like a workshop, but we all go into the evening inspired and satisfied.
The Belgian Implementation
In Leuven, cvo volt organized a training for cvo teachers from all over Flanders. They received a practical training with immediately usable material. The teachers came from various corners of the educational field: pedagogical supervisors, language teachers, NT2 teachers, tko coaches ... What they had in common was the conviction that stories can really make a difference in the classroom. After a short presentation of the project, the teachers got to work themselves, guided by one of the storytellers from cvo volt. They worked with life stories and discovered the storyteller in themselves. Because there is a storyteller in every one of us, and every story is worth being told. They also worked with traditional stories and legends. How is a story put together? How do you provide a logical structure and what climax can you use in a first or second level? Analyzing stories, retelling, exchanging points of view and empathetic listening were covered during this half-day session. Afterwards, participants - but not only them - could get further inspiration on the project's website, where the guide with tips and tricks, the story collection and worked out teaching examples can be consulted for free. After all, the goal of StoryComp is to create a community of storytellers in adult education, so the more storytellers, the better!
The French Implementation
In France, for example, we approached several partners in the Pau area who are involved in the field of adult education, such as social centers, second-chance schools and asylum-seeker reception centers that provide language courses for their residents. We succeeded in bringing together about twenty people, including adult educators, foreign language teachers, volunteers working with migrants, European project managers and people curious to discover our project and our tools.
The aim was to bring them together for a day around our project, to present the results but mainly to make them aware of the usefulness of storytelling in their professional or voluntary practice. And bingo!!! Our participants enjoyed a lot our tool, but not only! It succeeded in triggering a whole reflection on the regular implementation of our activities in the future with the people who took part in the training and the possibility of disseminating it to their peers.
The participants realized that there is a little storyteller hiding in each and every one of them, but they needed a little help to bring it out.
The Austrian Implementation
And finally it was time for storytelling in Vienna! With their heads full of colorful and inspiring stories, fascinating encounters and a gigantic repertoire of methods and exercises from the three-days workshop in Sweden, two teachers of basic education courses at the Viennese Volkshochschulen got to work immediately after their return: the young participants of their courses then listened spellbound to the gripping stories, exchanged among themselves about different ways of telling the same stories in their home countries and creatively acted out the stories in changing roles. The tenor towards the end was clear: more of it! The storytelling has awakened deep-seated competencies and strengthened the self-confidence of the participants, so that it will be used again and again during the lessons in the future.
Of course, the other teachers were also eager to learn about the methods and exercises that their two colleagues had brought and raved about. They were so curious that they registered in large numbers for the internal training and spent an intensive afternoon with the moderated, slow approach to storytelling. From short biographical experiences to inventing stories and telling traditional fairy tales, legends and stories, bursting with details and mental images, the basic education teachers ventured into teaching methods that were in part new to them and - which of course must never be neglected - had a lot of fun in the process! In the feedback session, it became clear that more time should be devoted to storytelling: both in the classroom and in continuing education for the teachers. So the story is not over yet...
The Erasmus+ project StoryComp
StoryComp stands for "Competences in Storytelling for Adult Educators in Basic Education and Civic Education" and started in November 2020 & got to an end in October 2022, funded as an Erasmus+ project. The partnership behind it consists of experts from seven European countries.
All the results of the projects are available online in 5 languages (Dutch, English, French, German & Slovenian) on the project website https://storycomp.eu.
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Storytelling workshops.
Once upon a time... there was a public speaking teacher who found this text and he said... Thank you!
Hey, everyone! I am this teacher, who teaches many subjects in high school classes, and one of these subjects is public speaking. For a long time i have searched how to improve storytelling skills of my students. And from this text i have gotten some great ideas. Through most our history as a human beings everything have been passed to the next generations through stories (whether verbal, written, drawn or even made in to the movies - it all counts as a story), so i strongly think that also knowledge should be passed on to the students through storytelling. And even better if the students can tell each other stories, while listening and learning at the same time. Person who have written some of the most influential and interesting stories, books and screenplays in the second part of the 20th century and early 21st century, author of the "Fight Club" Chuck Palahniuk have said "A good story should change the way you see the world." And as a teacher, that's what i want to do in my lessons - help students to see the world from different perspectives. And i think that having great storytelling skills is a skill that every teacher need to have, because knowing a lot of things is great, but if you can't tell these things in an interesting way to the students, it will go to waste.
Overall, thanks very much for this post, i read this and was so inspired to write this comment, because i always have felt like storytelling is one of the most underrated skills that educators could have, and i believe that not enough people in the education system are talking about this.