storytellermary

Welcome – Stories Make the World Go Around

Always a good day for a story! St. Peters weather.    Sunrise Sky  Night sky Air Quality Space Sta.

My videos on YouTube   Northern Lights Story

My story CDs and downloads on iTunes   

 YouTube videos of all my stories from CDBaby

I promised Hawthorn students to share how to fold a paper boat.  

Story sequence is folding down covers (makes house roof), next fold makes roof of porch, then rain hat, fire hat, grandpa’s admiral’s hat, then boat. Tear top and ends as boat wrecks and sinks, unfold to make life jacket.  . 😉

Fun Alphabet Exercise from Sesame Street

A-Z Challenge — This Home Page is stable — see Recent Posts to the right . . . or click https://storytellermary.wordpress.com/category/a-to-z-blogging/   (more info below)

** Organizers of Past Events (someday we’ll meet again):

Rivers BendAEYC Annual Conference  spring at St. Charles Community College workshop on storytelling in early childhood classes.

* Gateway Storytellers Meetings, St. Louis County Library on Lindbergh Tuesdays?

St. Louis Storytelling Festival,  Moving to October (for 35 years and counting will be virtual 😉

Mary Garrett, writer and storyteller, tells folk tales, humorous tales and personal stories.  She shared stories with her students at Francis Howell North High School and has since told at the Kansas City Storytelling Celebration, Texas, Timpanogos (Utah), O.O.P.S. (Ohio), and NSN (national) conferences, the St. Louis and St. Charles Storytelling Festivals, the Greater St. Louis Renaissance Faire, day care centers, parks, scout events, elementary through high schools, and retirement communities.

John Fussner, Mary’s father, was the first storyteller in her life. She credits him with instilling the love of make-believe. Mary believes in the world of story and the power of story to make this world a better place. After experiencing Mary’s stories, you can’t help but take some of that feeling with you.

Mary is located in St. Charles, Missouri  — but travels nationwide.

You can contact her  via e-mail   and on Facebook   and hear a few stories on YouTube.

Stories to Take Home With You:

Daddy John and Uncle John books available from Mary.

Frog and Friends and Courage and Wisdom: Stories Make the World Go Around   CDs available from Mary or from iTunes or CD Baby.

More details on CD blog entry.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/frog-and-friends/id344525625   http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/MaryGarrett

* * * * * * * * *

Teaching and Storytelling  — Stealth Storytelling in the Upper Grades

I spent 26 rewarding years teaching and enjoyed middle and high school (and for one glorious summer, preschool) students! (NCLB and administrivia, not as much.) Stories helped make those hundreds of classes for thousands of students much more fun and rewarding — and helped students learn more quickly and easily as well.

I knew in kindergarten that I wanted to teach, and my father encouraged that. He warned, though, that “since Daddy is a working man,” I would need good grades and scholarships in order to go to college, and I listened. I went to college with a National Merit Scholarship.

———- (Detour from teaching) ———-

That may sound like a simple career path, but life is never simple. About a year away from graduation at the University of Minnesota, I was given the news that there would be very few teaching jobs available.  The ending of the baby-boom “bulge” meant that schools would be RIFing (Reduction in Force) teachers.

In the 70’s, help-wanted ads were divided into “male” and “female” listings, and most liberal arts female graduates ended up working as clerks or secretaries, which I did, working for Prudential for eight years and learning organizational skills from Lorraine Lonquist. When Prudential decided they needed a woman agent, I was offered training in sales (changing corporate language from “men” for agents and “girls” for secretaries).

—————————————————

What does that have to do with teaching? Quite a bit — teaching definitely involves the same sort of persuasive techniques and telling stories. “Is every author your favorite, Miss Garrett?” “Well, not quite, not Hemingway.”

When I finally found my way to employment as a teacher back home in St. Louis, my substitute work turned into a full-time position at Downtown Daycare.  The director there sent me to my first storytelling class.  It was pure joy teaching those itty-bitties, but a day care teacher’s pay would not support me for long.

When I was hired to teach junior high, I thought I put aside storytelling; those students were “too old for stories,” we thought. Years later, an e-mail from a student, “I remember all those stories you told us,” let me know that I only thought I’d abandoned stories. By the time he sent that e-mail, I had consciously incorporated stories into all my classes whenever I could.  Stories helped with learning and with classroom atmosphere.

I had also begun to take stories elsewhere, to festivals, school and scouting events, retirement communities, anywhere people gathered and needed stories. Now that my schedule is more open (how did I find time to teach six classes a day for 180 days a year?) I can take stories and storytelling workshops on the road — life is good!

Past Events

A-Z Challenge — This Home Page is stable — see Recent Posts to the right . . . or click https://storytellermary.wordpress.com/category/a-to-z-blogging/

2015  http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com

2014

I’m keeping my theme a bit eclectic, “Storytelling and Life,” since it is my first time, and I am in that retired “broad margin to my life” mind-set.  I did “borrow” the idea to begin compiling ideas to make it a bit easier to keep up once April 1 arrives.

To see other storytellers’ A to Z Blogs, click http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/2014/03/storytellers-to-z.html

Csenge’s here http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/

. . and an interesting Harry Potter blog here http://myythmaker.blogspot.com