Friday, January 27, 2012

The beauty of storytelling

In one of my teacher's recent reflection blog, she spoke on telling stories as a way of teaching. In her blog, she likened using motivational story telling as a way of encouraging her students to improve their learning. While I think that there are other forms of teaching which are less direct but no less important, I agree that storytelling is a classic example.

Stories, read or told, have always been among the favorite teaching instruments of the world’s educators. I believe the reason is that stories are taught by attraction rather than compulsion – that is to say they invite rather than impose. Stories also capture the imagination of our students and touch their heart. Each of us has experienced the power of a good story which stirred strong feelings. And so that is why storytelling is such a natural way to engage and develop our students in learning.

Some teachers tell a story on the first day of school and their students find it captivating and so created an immediate rapport with the class. Teachers in a way are great “storytellers” of the various subjects they teach and as such storytelling can be considered as one of our most important teaching tools. And when the teacher finished the lesson (story) and you could see that the teacher has succeeded in reaching her students about the subject taught, it was not just because she had a convincing story or interesting subject. It was because the teacher told the story; that it came through the story to the students. And that made it personal, a gift from the teacher to the students. That is the beauty of storytelling.

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