Storytellers

In January of 2001, Beverly Frett, Clow LMC Director began taking a graduate level storytelling class at the University of Illinois. The class is taught by Betsy Hearne, professor, author, and storyteller. At the same time, Susan Black, Clow School Resident Storyteller, was ready to expand her storytelling horizons. A requirement of the class is a final project. Timing is everything and this was the perfect time for the development of a student storytelling club for everyone concerned!

An invitation was extended to fourth grade students who would be interested in becoming storytellers. One of the requirements was that they would be committed enough to be willing to miss out on their lunchtime recess at a minimum of one day a week. We had four willing, enthusiastic, creative, and excited volunteers.

They began the process of selecting that perfect story. A story that they would learn to love so that it could be told again and again and again. Sophie told her story to her dog. Ryland told his story to his sister. Conny and Meg practiced telling to their brothers.

Ryland, Sophie, Meg, and Conny had a lot of fun selecting a story!
Ryland doing a lot of reading.	Conny reworking her story to make it her own.
These four students read, studied, practiced, and learned their stories. One thing that they didn't do was to memorize the stories they selected. We used a number of techniques found in books, on a storytelling listserve, from workshops, and some we came up with ourselves (See our Resources page). Our student storytellers blossomed! In April they were ready to actually tell their stories to our kindergarten through fifth graders. They were GREAT! Research for the storytelling class project and Sue Black's network of storytellers provided us with an opportunity we could not ignore. Darlene Neumann, LMC director of the Shorewood School in Highland Park, has presented a student storytelling festival for a number of years. She invited our tellers to visit and we did. After enjoying a day at the Shorewood Storytelling Festival, we knew what we wanted to do in the spring of 2003 and that was to host our own storytelling festival. The final project for the graduate class was over and so was the school year but the Clow Student Storytellers had just begun. There were many students who wanted to join the group and become storytellers too and their chance came in the 2002-2003 school year.