An Interview with Nile Stanley and Brett Dillingham: Performance Literacy through Storytelling

Michael F. Shaughnessy - May 19, 2009
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico 

Nile Stanley and Brett Dillingham are the authors of Performance Literacy through Storytelling published this year (2009) in Gainesville, Florida from Maupin House Publishing. In this interview they respond to questions about their book and their methods.

1) Nile and Brett you have just co-authored a book. How did this collaboration come about?

Brett:  I met Nile at the annual IRA conference in Indianapolis about ten years ago.  He sat at my table with some colleagues and they began to perform poetry.  I told them a story.  From that moment, I knew I wanted to work with this guy- he was the real deal, walked the walk.  We ended up teaching poetry and storytelling together in Alaska, New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, all over the place.  I knew he worked with “real kids” every week; I did too.  I liked his book on teaching poetry- practical and sensible for teachers and students.  He began to see what I was doing teaching storytelling, and he thought it made a lot of sense- as well as being fun.  I was going to write a book on performance literacy and he knew a publisher. I asked him if he would like to write it with me.  The rest, as they say, is misery… I mean, history.

Nile:  That’s right, ditto for me.  The first time I saw Brett tell stories I was in awe.  It was one of those down on your knees, hand on the heart, “I am not worthy” moments.  Brett was the most dramatic storyteller I’d ever seen.  Immediately, I wanted to find out his philosophy, his approach to teaching literacy. Soon like me I found Brett “never asked teachers to try any lesson unless he had taught it first himself with real live kids.” Brett and I work in classrooms every week, so everything we teach is authentic - kid tested.  He invited me to Juneau, Alaska to assist him with literacy training. We worked together side by side, me doing poetry and him telling stories.  We really resonated with our arts-based approach to literacy and started collaborating.  Eventually, I would make five trips to Alaska and then I invited Brett to Florida a number of times.  Teacher and children audiences really liked our performance duo, so I knew we had to write together.

 2) Why a book on storytelling?

I don’t think we look at this as just a book on storytelling- not to demean books on storytelling, because it is the most important things humans do- tell stories to each other by mouth, books, emails, movies, etc.  Our book is different in that we teach teachers how to teach their students to write and tell their own stories.  We start there- not with learning someone else’s story and retelling it, but telling the one the student wrote.  The children discover they have a story inside them, and that they can tell it, and that their classmates and other students, teachers and parents like their work.  It is incredible for someone to learn that, especially students who don’t know they can, or struggle with ESL, or who have never found their voice in a classroom.  Suddenly, they are storytellers and writers- and as an added benefit, they are learning new vocabulary and sentence structure.  This is a book on oral language development, writing, reading and bringing together the school, home and community.

3) What is performance literacy? (PL)

In contrast to more traditional storytelling applications in schools, performance literacy uses storytelling to develop all components of literacy, encouraging both academic and social growth that is accessible to all students. Simply put, performance literacy is the process of teaching students to write and perform stories. But the phrase, coined by Brett Dillingham in a 2005 Reading Teacher article, “Performance Literacy” encompasses much more. Performance literacy is a powerful educational approach that increases students’ language development, vocabulary, and comprehension; internalizes an understanding of the writing process; integrates learning across the content areas; develops speaking and listening skills; and deepens the connection between home, school, and community.

•  students are taught to consciously use sound, expression, and movement to tell stories with an impact.

•  story ideas are elicited from the students themselves, supporting the use of prior knowledge, a critical component of writing and motivation.

•  students tell and retell stories to one another before turning in a written first draft. This provides a safe environment in which students verbally create and “fill in” their stories.

•  students are taught how to critique each other in a non-threatening manner, encouraging respect while providing suggestions for improvement.

•  final performances, with a real audience of other classes, parents, and often community

4) Why is it important?

There is a great deal of pressure for teachers to prepare students for testing in reading and writing.  However, children can’t read and write words they have not spoken or heard. Yet teachers spend very little time on oral language development.  We learn vocabulary and sentence structure through speaking and listening- they are the foundation for reading and writing.  Performance literacy focuses on the speaking/listening foundation, adds the writing process and reading, then pulls in the home-school connection with student performance.  It is the most powerful language development process we are aware of in education.  It works with students from any culture, and socio-economic level.  And they like it- they own the work, and their work is good.

5) What can a parent do to encourage storytelling?

The first thing they can do is either get rid of their television or strictly monitor the amount of time and content they let their children watch.  Of course that goes for computers too.  They can tuck their children in each night and tell them stories of their youth, their day, their dreams.  They can ask their children questions about their days, their dreams, real and imaginary.  Learn as much as you can about your family history, or your culture and talk about it as a story.  Take walks with their child, eat meals together.  The most important thing is to talk with their children; talking is almost always in story format.  They can use our book if they want to use a more formal process.  I’m most interested in the amount of conversation parents have with children, and that they do things together (museums, parks, zoos, etc.) and that they engage in oral language rather than television and video someone else created. 

6) Tell me what are the developmental stages of storytelling children grow
through?

Our research with kindergarten through eighth students indicates children progress through three stages of storytelling:  beginning, intermediate and advanced. At the beginning level, stories are typically brief, from less than a minute to three minutes. The content tends to focus on personal life, family, and animals. The challenge is getting students to learn the basics: to demonstrate good performer etiquette and speak loudly and clearly. Good stories for beginners are generally short, have a simple plot, invite audience participation, and can be readily acted out and retold by the children. At the intermediate level, stories are usually longer. They may branch out into areas of the curriculum such as history, science, etc. Folktale plot patterns, themes, and motifs may be integrated. The challenge for children is honing the basics, which require more intense reading, writing, study, and rehearsal. Students’ poise, motivation, and confidence are easily affected by peer pressure, so positive feedback is crucial. At the advanced level, the stories may range from a short monologue to a longer historical re-enactment. The content not only includes elements of classic folktales but draws broadly from the human drama and the “real stories” found in current events, history, and science. The performance may include more sophisticated techniques such as song, dance, music, and multimedia. Advanced storytellers are ready to research and develop their own standards of performance. The challenge is for teachers to nurture students in finding their own voices and styles and providing the time and place to compose and tell stories.

7) How can content teachers integrate storytelling?

 Storytelling doesn’t have to be relegated to the language arts or English class. Storytelling can be an incredibly flexible and powerful learning tool across the content areas like social studies and science.

Storytelling promotes active, social learning. It provides an engaging alternative to the all-too-pervasive routine of “read the textbook and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.” Here are just a few ways students can demonstrate their learning through storytelling:

• Supplement the textbook with trade books. Content presented as narrative is easier to understand, provides a richer context, and elicits emotional involvement in the topic. Reading The Diary of Anne Frank helps students understand and really feel what living in the doom of the Holocaust was like.

• Build interpersonal communication skills with monologues. Let students’ show and tell what they have learned through performing monologues based on their research of famous scientists and historical figures.

• Be a content expert. Students become any animal, person, or even an object that they have studied and then tell their stories of fact through a class question-and-answer session.

• Teach the storytelling study strategy. After each lecture, tell a story about the material covered. Students can take turns reviewing the concepts learned, emphasizing why this material is important, and how they will use what they’ve learned in their everyday lives.

8)  How does PL address the standards?

State standards always involve building reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. These skills are naturally embedded within storytelling, improving students’ literacy skills and, subsequently, their test scores. Teachers from around the world have tried our methods for developing literacy skills through storytelling in their international or national standards-based curriculums, and the results speak for themselves. Storytelling supports standards because it

• increases opportunities for writing.

• develops self-expression and confidence.

• is accessible to all children and easy to use in any class.

• forges positive home/school connections.

• works across the content areas to make subjects come alive.

9)What is digital storytelling?

Digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. Digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and music. Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories created by students are between one and ten minutes. They can range from personal tales, to visually compelling “show-and-tells” backed with a musical beat, to the recounting of historical events with a blend of personal interviews and news reel footage, to the retelling of favorite children’s books with hand-sculpted clay figures. Telling stories through digital media has become easier and does not require expensive equipment or technological expertise. A variety of software applications, some of which are already on most computers (such as PowerPoint, iMovie, Movie Maker, and Photo Story), are commonly used. Windows Movie Maker is easy to use and comes already installed on many PCs. You can use the Google Image search engine to find free, non-copyrighted pictures that support your narratives, or record performances with a digital video camera. Download the videos to Movie Maker, use a microphone to do voice-over narration where necessary, and add music (either free downloads or original songs if you’re musically inclined). Final stories can be published on YouTube.

There are plenty of examples at our companion website:

http://www.unf.edu/~nstanley/powerpoint.htm.

Our bio’s follow:

Nile Stanley, Ph.D.

www.unf.edu/~nstanley/home.htm

Affectionately known as “Nile Crocodile, the Reading Reptile,” Stanley is a performance poet, digital storyteller, researcher, and professor of reading and education at the University of North Florida. Nile is the author of the book Creating Readers with Poetry (2004). He is a former editor of the Florida Reading Quarterly, and a former president of the New Mexico State Council of the International Reading Association (IRA). He served as an evaluator for the Even Start early literacy project at Florida International University, Miami. Stanley has also been a professor-in-residence at Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School, Lake Forest Elementary School, and Brentwood Elementary School of the Arts (all in Jacksonville). He directs poetry clubs at J. Allen Axson Montessori School and St. Clair Evans Academy, which are supported by gifts from the Cummer Family Foundation. He uses poetry and storytelling to teach literacy to pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students. UNF and Duval County Schools were the 2009 recipients of the National Association for Professional Development Schools Distinguished Program in Teacher Education and received a similar honor from the Association of Teacher Educators in 2003. Stanley is a frequent presenter at international, national, regional, state, and local conferences.

Brett Dillingham, M.Ed.

www.brettdillingham.com

Brett performs and teaches storytelling and performance literacy in Alaska, Canada, Ireland, England, Germany, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Russia, and the continental U.S. His work has been performed at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and he has performed live storytelling on National Public Radio and at the Calgary International Children’s Festival, Yukon Performing Arts Centre, National America Reads conference, National Migrant Education conference and the World Congress on Reading. He was selected to be the featured storyteller at the International Reading Association annual conference in 2005 and 2009. In his workshops, Brett teaches writing, storytelling, poetry and drama. He is the past president of the Alaska State Literacy Association (Alaska IRA) and is a published poet and playwright. His first children’s book, Raven Day, was published in January 2002 by McGraw-Hill.