I’ve been interested in the role of storytelling in the classroom for a long time. When teaching writing, I am often working with students on the difficult art of getting out of one’s own way enough to be able to tell stories effectively. Much of the work I do through Wind&Bones is about telling better stories. And in my teaching at Parami University, whether I am talking about vexed questions of identity and resistance in contemporary post-coup Myanmar, or getting to grips with ancient philosophers such as Socrates, Zhuangzi and Hipparchia, I often start by getting students to share stories of their own. And when I’m not telling stories of my own writing novels and nonfiction, I have also written academically on both philosophy and storytelling.
So I was delighted to be invited by LAS Collab to write Storytelling in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Classroom, a small guide, funded by the Open Society Foundation, on how to weave storytelling into the liberal arts and sciences classroom. This guide draws on the approach we take to storytelling at Wind&Bones, exploring how at the very heart of storytelling is the desire to communicate. Through developing skills in face-to-face storytelling, students can make stronger connections with their peers and with the subject-matter they are studying, while growing in confidence and building stronger, more engaged communities of teaching and learning.
Here’s the cover. It’s looking very pretty.
I’ll link to the download in due course!
Image: Franz Xaver Winterhalter - Decamerone. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
