The Power of Stories

Stories stick. We remember them. Stories in the classroom can be powerful learning tools.

I still recall Mrs. Marshall, my elementary school music teacher, telling us the tale of Mr. Do and Mr. Mi, who lived on the same street with an empty lot between their houses.

I remember a terrible and lengthy joke/story Mr. Holpp, my seventh-grade Life Science teacher, told us when we were learning about parasites. It involved a curious cure for a patient’s tapeworm and had the punchline, spoken by the tapeworm itself, “Where’s the pickle?” More importantly, it helped me learn understand and remember the concept of operant conditioning.

I’ll never forget my grandma’s story of her first date with my grandpa, a memorable blind date that ended with my grandfather, wearing a white suit stained with watermelon juice, sitting on the steps in front of Grandma’s house and ripping up the photo he had been carrying in his wallet of his now-ex girlfriend. Though this story was not told in a classroom, it was clearly a part of the curriculum of life as my grandma taught me about the love, humor,  and dedication that characterized their life together through much of the 20th century.

When teachers learn to harness the power of effective storytelling, they unleash a mighty instructional tool. For several reasons, a story judiciously used can pack an educational wallop.

As I stated earlier, stories are memorable. They can be used to make a complex abstract concept come to life. I once watched Ashley Ogal at Carpenter Middle School describe to her students two weddings in which she served as a bridesmaid. One was a fancy affair with a plated dinner and a deejay at a swanky hotel; the other was a more casual backyard celebration with a picnic buffet and music from an homemade iPod playlist blaring from home stereo speakers. Ashley described each wedding reception to her seventh graders and concluded her story by saying that both events, though different, were wonderful in their own ways. She then connected the story to the concept of voice in writing. While it’s okay in some situations, she explained, to write in a style akin to “Y’all get up and dance now,” sometimes it’s more appropriate to adopt the voice of the deejay: “Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to the dance floor as the newlywed couple shares their first dance.” I feel reasonably certain that her students will understand the difference between formal and informal voice forevermore after hearing this memorable story.

Not only is storytelling an excellent way to make a point stick, stories also build community in your classroom. When teachers share a story from their own lives, they share a piece of themselves. A story of a lesson learned, a past struggle, or an embarrassing gaffe can not only provide some guidance to students, but it can also make the storyteller a little more human in the eyes of the listeners. When my students embarked on online research, I liked to tell them about “the old days” when you had to get your mom to take you to the Richardson Public Library (they had more magazines than Plano), where you had to use the paperback Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature to identify articles of interest, fill out a piece of paper to request the magazine, wait by the window while some librarian fetched it, pray that no one before you had ripped the pages out of the magazine, read the article, and determine whether it was worth spending your precious dime-a-page to copy at the Xerox machine. The point of my story was that the Internet now practically delivers the text of millions of magazines and newspapers to them; however, the researcher now has to work that much harder to make sure that what is delivered is worth using. Sharing the hardships of my past life as a high school researcher amused my students while helping them understand why I feel so strongly about the importance of vigilance in online research.

Perhaps the most powerful use of stories in the classroom is to build up the number of stories your students have in their own libraries of experience. When I share my story with you, my story becomes your story. And the more stories you have to tell, the more you understand about the world. I may not have been alive during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but because I attended the school district’s annual tribute event in January honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and heard the stories of struggles and triumphs that took place in our own city told by people who were there, I have stories to tell about the courage of those who paved the way for others. When a college classmate who has transitioned from female to male told me at Homecoming several years ago about his difficulties with airport security screenings, access to public restrooms, and rejection by his family, I gained some stories to help me understand and appreciate the struggles of transgender people in our society today. His stories put a personal face on something that had previously been only a news headline to me. This was someone I have known for over 20 years, and when he smiled while telling me that he can now, for the first time ever, stand to have a mirror in his house because it finally reflects back who he really is, his story changed me. And because he shared his story with me, I can now share it with others.

English teachers have long known what research has now confirmed: reading literary fiction improves people’s empathy. Whether we read them or have them told to us, the stories and experiences of others make us better people. We owe it to our students to expose them to many stories so they can choose which ones will shape their own understandings of the world around them.

All of this talk about stories comes with one caveat: teachers must be purposeful about how and when they insert stories into their instruction. Stories without a purpose are a waste of time. Stories with too much detail or with meandering plotlines confuse students. Overly complicated stories lose students’ focus and interest. Stories without an introduction and summative explanation often cause students to miss the point.

I invite you to take a moment to think about the stories from your own life or the ones you’ve collected over your life that you can add to your personal library of stories to use in the classroom. Be on the lookout always for new stories to enhance your collection. Choose wisely, though. As the Witch in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods pointed out, “Careful before you say, ‘Listen to me.’ Children will listen.”