Story Works: How Teachers Can Use Shared Stories in the New Curriculum

Lois Provost Turchetti is a professional children’s storyteller (in
English and Caribbean Creole), who also conducts educational workshops
in Toronto.

David Booth, who teaches at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education at University of Toronto, is the author of many books for
teachers and parents and is an award-winning writer of children’s
books. Bob Barton is a co-founder of the Storytellers School of Toronto,
a teacher and language resource consultant, and an wide-ranging author
of everything from children’s picture books to professional works.

Story Works is a reworked, updated edition of Booth and Barton’s
earlier book, Stories in the Classroom. It springs from the authors’
belief that stories—particularly those stories we tell about
ourselves—teach basic human truths in simplified folk form and also in
more elaborated genres. Their book contains samples of children’s
writing (both poetic and biographical) and soul-searching questions for
both teachers and students, who are encouraged to learn from each other
via the story process. In the classroom, the authors maintain, story can
help “foster cooperative and collaborative communities that support
and enrich learning.” Put another way, story as an approach to
learning enables students to put themselves into the process, as opposed
to merely reproducing what they have been told.

Booth and Barton also draw on the concept of oral tradition as a
vehicle for wholeness, including such topics as story and narrative,
story and emotion, story and therapy, and story and school violence.
While their book is not intended to be used for therapeutic purposes,
the authors link and integrate visual, oral, and dramatic arts; provide
specific suggestions for different subject areas; and demonstrate that
knowing our own histories and stories is the beginning of knowing who we
are and where we are headed.