Storytelling Presentation

I was really happy I chose the Storytelling theme for my group project. The research was somewhat difficult as it was challenging to find reliable sources that provided information from a Ghanaian perspective or at least from a non-biased or skewed perspective. The Storytelling presentation inspired me and it is really exciting to use the knowledge I gained from the project to create curriculum for the 4th graders I teach art to. On Friday when we taught the 4th graders we actually used the same Anansi book for their lesson. We then made “storysticks” where students drew pictures to represent a story on a cardstock piece of paper and we then folded it to make a cylinder or stick with their unique story on it. We then made spiders and students got to paint Adinkra symbols on the backs of their Anansi spiders. This project was very rewarding and the students loved it so I am thankful to have been provided information through the class and the project to share with my students. It also felt very rewarding to see how everyone engaged with our Storytelling lesson on Tuesday. I was really impressed with everyone’s stories and presentations even though there wasn’t too much time for the activity. We were able to see the many different modes stories can be told through- using drawings, words, technology, photographs. There is so much possibility and potential in telling stories. For me an action step is to encourage and provide space for young people to tell their own stories and bring in aspects of themselves and knowledge or lessons they may have learned through real world experiences into the classroom. Where is the time/space for storytelling in a high-stakes standardized testing environment?