One of the
highlights of the day was the 90 minutes spent with Patti Christensen, where she explained how
she teaches story telling. She explained how she uses props to help her
learners (she calls them learners instead of students) warm up to reading
through story-telling.
At the end
of her presentation she passed around her Mother's old button box and asked
every participant to feel the contents and select one button that brought
forward a memory for them. Then she asked to hear those stories.
~ One man
came to the head of the group holding a large circular, four-holed, flat,
mostly undecorated button. He said when he was a young man he went on travel to
Europe for his job and in that other country he met and fell in love with
a business woman from another company . . . . .
~ A second
person stood and offered a story. The woman held up a big, two holed white
button. My parents died when I was young, she said. And I was put in an
orphanage. All the little girls, like me wore cotton pinafores designed like my
mother's apron had been . . . . .
~ A third
person stood to tell about the very tiny golden button she held between two
fingers and a thumb. One day when I was very young, she said, I met a cricket
in my bedroom. What is that you have on your face? I asked the cricket and he
said he was wearing a magic gold face mask . . . . .
I rewrote
all three stories this morning with all the details I could recall. This
morning I shared my experience and these stories with my Braille reading group
and they enjoyed hearing the button stories as much as I did. What followed for
us was a half hour of shared folklore and family recollections -- all that,
brought about by Patti Christensen's brilliant presentation on Saturday
morning.
Thank you
again for your generosity. You and the folks at the library have been
enormously kind to me. I feel quite blessed to work there and hope my library
experiences with you and the students we help just keep getting better and
better.
Jackie
Cotton
Storytelling
Resources:
~ Brave
Tales: Developing Literacy Through Storytelling
by Will Coleman, Network Continuum Education 2007
The SCLLN blog posts literacy jobs in California. Listings can be for member libraries or other libraries or agencies. There are also 2 national links.
