Dealing with Fear by Mike Lockett

A twelve-year-old student was in my storytelling class in Taichung Taiwan.  

“Do you have any questions?” I asked the class.

The girl meekly raised her hand and asked, “How can I stop being afraid?  I am scared to get up in front of a group.”

I told the class a story.

Lion was hunting for something to eat when he spied Brother Goat standing on top of a big rock.  Brother Goat was chewing grass that grew between the stones.  He chewed and chewed.  His jaws worked up and down.  Lion came closer to Brother Goat.

Brother Goat saw Lion coming and knew he had no chance to get away.  Goat thought, “I can run away.  But, Lion will catch me and eat me.  I can play dead.  But, Lion will still eat me.  I think I just need to pretend to be brave.”  So, he stayed on top of the rock and kept chewing.  He chewed and chewed and chewed.

Lion came closer.  "What are you eating, Brother Goat," asked Lion.

Brother Goat was scared.  But, he did not let Lion know it.  "I am chewing this rock in order to sharpen my teeth," he said.  "Then I am going to eat you."

Now it was Lion's turn to be afraid.  If Brother Goat was strong enough to chew up and eat a rock, he might be able to eat a lion."  Lion’s heart beat faster.  

He thought, “I can run away.  But, Goat might catch me and eat me.  I can play dead.  But, Goat still might eat me.”  The Lion decided that the only thing to do was to walk away slowly and hope Goat did not see how afraid he was.

"Enjoy your dinner," said Lion.  Then Lion turned.  He walked slowly at first, watching Goat over his shoulder.  As he got further away from Goat, Lion began to run.

Brother Goat just kept chewing as he watched Lion leave.  He shook in fear as he saw Lion run into the woods.  Brother Goat had escaped death.  Then he remembered that sometimes it pays to act brave when you are really afraid.

“What did you learn from the story?” I asked the class and looked right at the girl.

“That it is okay to be afraid, but you can pretend to be brave?” she questioned.

I smiled as all the rest of the students shook their heads up and down in agreement.  


That young girl was one of the first to volunteer to tell a story to the group.  She was afraid, but she pretended to be brave.  She told her story well and took a great step that day on her path to becoming a storyteller.

This story was adapted by Dr. Mike Lockett from an early American story, 'Buh Goat Eats Rock' by C. Jones on Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast, 1888. 

Dr. Mike Lockett has been sharing stories with audiences for over forty years. He lives in Normal, Illinois, and because of that, he is called the Normal Storyteller. Dr. Lockett has worked in every single facet of education you can imagine. He's done everything from office work to principal.His life has been spent in education.
These days he travels all over the United States and Asia performing for intergenerational audiences.

In Residence at Stoneviille Elementary School: You Want Me To Work With What Age?

Stoneville, NC

This week I am in residence in Stoneville, NC. This means that I am teaching all week at Stoneville Elementary school.

This means I have four classes a day. In some residencies, I get a core class, or I work with a single grade level.

I've got some fun residencies in my toolkit for grades three through twelve

 I have one about humans needing to leave the earth because it is dying. The residency is designed to get students to study the solar system, consider alternative energy, visualize technologies that do not exist, work together in small groups, research current technologies that are being considered for space exploration, as well as lots of arts and creative drama work.

I went into the classroom, explained who I was and what I was doing there. When I started the creative drama element of the residency by telling the group of fourth graders they were the last, best defense against the destruction of the world, about three quarters of the kids thought I was undercover from NASA. Some of them were pretty freaked out about it. The next day I had to explain once more that it was a creative drama experience. Despite realizing I really was not sent from NASA, the kids took the activity very seriously. All of the classes had a great time.



Basically, each class was divided into small groups, and each group came up with plans to evacuate the earth. I was cool with any plan they could concoct, and we would create the technology to make it work no matter how far fetched.

The students spent three days planning our escape. I came in on the fourth day, told them that there was bad news. Time was shorter than we knew. Not everyone could get off of the planet. A representative from each group came up and drew a slip of paper out of a bag. The slips with nothing on them meant the group got to leave, but the ones with red lines across them had to stay on the planet. We didn't have the resources to evacuate them. The groups that were going to be left behind were extremely bummed. There were some tears. We bucked up, however, and began to consider how to proceed.

Four days into a five day residency,  one or two groups in each room had to scrap all of their plans and begin to see if they could figure out a way to stay on the planet, and survive. On the fifth day, we spent most of our time in the evacuation stage, except for the abandoned groups...they threw themselves into saving our planet with such energy and fervor, that their ideas were extremely cool. The students participated in guided visualizations, drew pictures, and described the systems they designed.

The teachers had pulled books about the solar system earlier in the year, but nobody looked at them twice. That week, the books made the rounds in the rooms as student groups tried to pick a planet on which to live, and create life support systems to deal with the various drawbacks of their orbits, atmospheres, and proximity to the sun. The kids had a blast, and if it encouraged even one of them to think seriously about physics, the universe, science of any kind or alternative fuel sources...then it was worth it. If not, then it was still a blast and we got all sorts of arts impact out of it.

Ellis Island

I also run an involved five day residency about Ellis Island. A version of that residency can be found in the wonderful book by Sherry Norfolk and Jane Stenson entitled Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom.

I have one residency on the start of the revolutionary war. I also teach a variety of writing residencies that are designed to help students with descriptive writing, and I've taught fantasy writing residencies as well.

Still and all, it is not my favorite way to spend a week.

Stoneville Elementary

This week I am in residence in Stoneville, NC.  No matter how long I do this job, there is always something new!

I have never quite done a residency like this. I am visiting every single class in the school once, and then I have a show at the end of the week. I am not seeing any class more than once! How can you build anything? You can't. You just offer up a sampling. It is not very satisfying, but I get why they want to do it this way. It allows for more arts exposure for every kid in the school.

This means I have to work with Kindergarten and First Grade. There are few things that can make my heart stop beating as quickly as knowing I have to spend an hour in a Kindergarten or first grade class.

I have no idea what you are supposed to do with little bitty kids in a classroom! I can tell stories to them all day long, but teaching them?  Just kill me now.

I don't know what people did about this sort of conundrum before the internet, luckily, I don't have that challenge. I had some ideas about what I might try that seemed a bit out there, so I reached out to our storytelling community online and asked, "what do I do?"

Our very supportive storytelling community was happy to offer up some ideas and encouragement. I finished my final classes with K and 1 today, and they were great.

What did I do?

Well, I told a version of goldilocks where she is a really naughty person. We played it in drama space, acting out the story, and then we talked about story structure.



Luckily, this school has done a great deal of work helping students with story structure. This means they already know the beginning, middle, end organization of a tale. We looked at what images or ideas go in each part of the story. The part of the story they had the most trouble with was Resolution, but they got the hang of it.

With the Kindergarteners, I also played the Button Factory. This is how I learned it.

Hi! My name is Joe!
(The children repeat this line.)
And I work in a Button Factory!
(Repeat)
I have a house!
(Repeat)
And a dog!
(Repeat)
And a family!
(Repeat)
One Day, my boss came up to me.
(Repeat)
He said, "Joe are ya busy?"
(Repeat)
I said, "No."
(Repeat)
So he said, "Work with your right hand."

What happens here is I start making big circles with my right hand.

source

We go through the chorus again, and after Joe says 'no', the boss says, "Work With Your Left Hand"

The rest of the instructions are added onto the hand movements
Work with your right leg (Bring that leg up and down)
Work with your left leg (March)
Work with your bottom (wiggle while you march and move your hands)
Work with your nose! (Move your head back and forth or all around while you do the other movements)

At the end of this last chorus when the boss says, "Joe, are ya busy?" you say 'YES!"

Afterwards, we went through the button factory using our story structure chart, and focused on how that story broke down into characters, setting, a problem that vaults the character into action and then the resolution of the action.

The Monarch Butterfly

Two of my  kindergartens and one of my first grades were immersion classes, and so I broke out La Mariposa (the butterfly), a story I learned from Carrie Sue Ayvar.

Bilingual storytelling is fun! The kids who spoke Spanish enjoyed knowing what was happening a half step before their English speaking peers. All in all, it was a great time.

Tomorrow I am seeing all of the second graders at the same time, and then I have a show.

I'm in residence in Stoneville, NC. I'm learning so much about being in the classroom, managing kids, and gauging how they are doing.

I am recalling why I would be a terrible classroom teacher.

I am enjoying playing with the kids. I'm enjoying watching the kids focus on improving their concentration and visualization skills. I'm enjoying the teachers as they watch the process and make notes about follow up after I'm done.

It is good to do this every now and then as I write and think about brain function, but as much fun as I am having....I'm looking forward to being done tomorrow!


Happy Tell/Teaching!

Sara DeBeer : Storytelling Ancient Mind Melding

Sara DeBeer

Storytelling: Ancient Mind Melding

 In my work as a teller of traditional folktales, I engage listeners in the experience of co-creating stories. Children often mirror my expressions: when I scowl with greed or scorn, they scowl as well; when my face grows worried and concerned, their faces share the worry, the concern; when my face lights up with joy or triumph, I look out on a sea of smiles. 

While the bond which joins teller and listener is strong, equally powerful is the realization that every listener perceives the characters, the setting, and the story in his or her own way. Story-listening and story exploration provide important opportunities for students to exercise their ability to create their own internal images.

We see what we see!

Being a teaching artist is quite different from telling stories to hundreds of kids in an auditorium (or a cafetorium, or worse yet, a gym). In the classroom, I shift back and forth between being a performer, telling a story while students listen in rapt attention, and being a facilitator, encouraging students to share observations about the stories and the art of storytelling.  Students see that voice, gesture, and language can strengthen the presentation of a story and its impact.  

An artist can serve as a role model for students, whether the students are going to model their lives directly on that artist (becoming artists themselves) or whether they incorporate some aspects of that art form into their daily lives; contact with a resident storyteller strengthens all students' communication skills.  At the same time, by observing the students' interaction with the artist and the art, teachers often perceive their own students in a whole new way. 

Click here for a study about the importance of teaching artists!

           

During my visits to classrooms, I include time for students to process the story which they just heard. Younger students draw pictures of their favorite part of the story, and sequence the drawings, creating a book which retells the story. Older students work as a group to create monologues based on different characters in the story. They then take turns reading aloud the monologues. We choose to make parts of the monologues choral, so there is a role for the entire class during the oral reading activity.

           

Whether I am presenting an assembly program, or working as a teaching artist, I ask for information from teachers ahead of time so my presentations integrate with themes currently being studied in the classrooms. Although some see me as an “entertainer”, I see myself foremost as an educator. With a Masters in Education from the Bank Street School of New York, and years of experience as a classroom teacher, I am able to partner with teachers and design programs which tie in with on-going classroom studies of science, social studies, and language arts.  Teachers who work with me soon recognize that stories can be a tool for helping students learn any subject.

            

Click here to check out Artsblog for Arts & Ed info!

In these different ways, I aim to instill a love of the value of storylistening and storytelling, as well as an appreciation of the richness of the folktales and folk traditions of a broad range of world cultures. When children lose themselves in the world of stories, they find new understanding of what it means to be human.

You can find our more about Sara at storydebeer.com

Happy Teaching!