Bio: My Storytelling Story
Since I was a young child I have always gravitated to the person in the room who has a story to tell. In 1979 when I heard my first “professional” storyteller, Diane Wolkstein, I discovered the path I wished to follow. At the time I was a newly minted English teacher, and after hearing a story told without a book, I had the epiphany that this was the very best way to teach that I’d ever witnessed.
Thus began my lifelong storytelling journey. Though I had been an avid reader all my life, I was new to folk and fairytales, and I fell in love with them. Filled with humor, simple and profound wisdom, and images of immense beauty, these stories have lasted through hundreds of years through oral transmission. They are usually lifeless on the page, but with every telling, they come alive again, as a plant comes to life with sun and water.
Over the years I developed a repertoire of these tales, and though I have performed for numerous large and small audiences, my career was motivated by the ways in which storytelling could inspire learning. As the first storyteller to work for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Artists-in-Education Program, I found that children became intensely engaged when I told a story. I developed curriculum using storytelling as a springboard for writing process, discussion, creativity, listening and speaking skills. For seventeen years I visited hundreds of schools.
After I was hired by the NJ State Arts Council to do some long-term school residency programs in Trenton, New Jersey, I changed my course. The children in P.J. Hill and Grant Elementary Schools were so inspired by storytelling, that I realized this might just be the best route to literacy that I could imagine. In 1996 I founded the nonprofit corporation Storytelling Arts to support literacy and learning in low-income and special needs New Jersey schools. I wasn’t interested in the one-time assembly program, the “treat” of the day. Instead I wanted to bring long-term programs that would have depth and impact.
Nine other storytellers came on board to help deliver the programming, and over the next twelve years I was able to raise grant funding and bring storytelling programs to fifty institutions including Head Start programs, elementary and middle schools, detention centers, and schools for students with learning differences and behavioral problems. And yes, we discovered that storytelling had an enormous impact on the children and young adults we served. Through a weeklong summer storytelling institute at Princeton University, co-sponsored by Princeton’s Teacher Preparation Program, I was also able to help teachers learn the craft of storytelling for the classroom. It was my hope that storytelling would ultimately find its way into the toolbox of every teacher.
About seven years into running the nonprofit, I was puzzled as to why I was so successful in obtaining foundation grants. After presenting a workshop on storytelling to other directors of nonprofits in Mercer County, I had a revelation. Telling the story of Storytelling Arts had been the key in getting almost every grant for which I applied. That has motivated me to work with other nonprofits to teach them how to tell their own stories effectively, both orally and in writing. These stories, more than any formal description we can compose, truly let our public and our partners understand and appreciate who we are, what we do, and why we do it. Foundations also need to tell their stories so that the general public, boards of trustees, and staff members connect to the history and on-going philanthropy that makes an enormous impact on our quality of life.
After twelve years, I left Storytelling Arts to move to New Hampshire in order to enroll my son in a high school there. During this time I started to think about storytelling in a different way. I had begun to pay more attention to something that had been happening in my workshops for years. Although folks came to study storytelling with me, they would leave the workshops with deep bonds of friendship. In my weeklong intensives, there was such a strong feeling of connection that lifelong friendships continued after the workshops ended. Many teachers commented that they felt more connected to these new colleagues in one week than they had ever felt in their own schools, despite years of employment.
That got me to thinking about the power of storytelling to build community. Although for years I had been focused on literacy, I began to think that perhaps the real gemstone in storytelling was its capacity to create and nurture community. I had always told my students that storytelling is essentially an act of friendship.
My friend Hetty Baiz, manager of the Project Office at Princeton University’s Office of Information Technology (OIT), approached me about doing a workshop to address the diversity initiative at Princeton and OIT’s desire to make the department a more welcoming place to work. We began to present these workshops, daylong experiences for fifteen staff members. Although Hetty and I expected employees to say that they couldn’t afford to spend a whole day in a storytelling workshop, the opposite happened. They said that in a day they had gotten to know their colleagues better than they had in many years of working together, and they recommended that the workshop be offered to everyone in the department. For the next two and a half years I also used storytelling at Princeton to facilitate workshops on exploring diversity/building community, transition and change, creativity, and team-building for new work groups. Rutgers and Syracuse also reached out to offer similar experiences.
Now I am venturing on the third leg of my storytelling journey. I wish to help organizations—be they philanthropies or nonprofits—to rediscover their own stories and to tell them effectively, both in speaking and writing. I also want to help organizations of all kinds—schools, nonprofits, and businesses—to build community in the workplace.
I welcome the opportunity to speak to you about telling your organization’s story and/or building community in your workplace.