“When teachers become story tellers, they can break the rigidness of student-teacher relationship and make classrooms livelier,” says Shanthi Ramoharan, one among the four teachers of Mahatma Group of Schools who underwent a week’s certificate course on Story Telling at Kathalaya, Bangalore. With an aim to spread story telling among academicians in Madurai and develop an exclusive group of story tellers, the four teachers have been sharing their knowledge and experience with other teachers from various schools in surrounding districts since last year.
Conducted for the second time, the training for teachers this year had 15 participants from Tiruchi, Ramanathapuram, Tirunelveli, Erode and Pudukottai. “Most schools these days have a separate class for story telling, as stories have a positive impact on children,” says Karpagam, a teacher from Kaveri International School, Manaparai. “Stories have also made teaching easier and enjoyable. We link stories to subjects like Mathematics, Geography, History and Physics, where students begin to like even mundane lessons.”
The one-week training module includes story telling tips, how and why to tell stories in classes, hands-on experience of making stick, hand and finger puppets out of paper, vegetable carving and making of other props such as toy-theatre.
“Children in KG tend to watch and learn from teachers and hence it is important for the teacher to be an outgoing and friendly story teller,” says Kannagi, from Krishna International School, Ramanathapuram.
Chellammal, a Mathematics teacher from Pushpalatha Vidya Mandir in Tirunelveli, says that story telling is relevant to any age group and even high school students enjoy a session of stories. She says, “Stories widen the creativity and imagination of students. When introduced in middle-school, stories helped them in developing vocabulary.”
“We plan to continue this training every year so that we can reach more people from different districts,” says Shanthi Ramoharan. Rebecca Sam, Vathany and Priya Ganesh are the other members who train the teachers in the art.
