The Power of Storytelling for Youth
For a long time, a nonprofit group known as The Moth has produced workshops, occasions and a well-liked radio present the place folks inform transformative tales from their lives. And in 2012, the group began working with excessive faculties, teaching college students to show their tales into polished orations.
This yr the nonprofit has began sharing these pupil tales in a brand new spin-off podcast, known as Grown.
“With Grown, we really wanted to take the probably thousands and thousands of stories at this point of young people who’ve gone through the Moth’s education program and give them a platform to be aired for a larger audience to listen to,” stated Aleeza Kazmi, co-host of Grown.
Kazmi is aware of the storytelling course of first-hand. When she was 17, she went via a Moth workshop at her highschool in New York City. And she stated it was formative for her personal private growth and progress.
“People at all phases of their life are still figuring things out — from relationships with others, to relationships with their bodies, to their career. And I think that it’s really important for us just to be more honest about that because that can make the world a little bit more peaceful if we’re all just honest about the fact that we’re just not really having it all figured out yet,” she stated.
For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we linked with Kazmi, and with the chief of The Moth’s education efforts, Melissa Brown, to speak about what they’re studying from younger storytellers, and why they consider storytelling ought to be taught in faculties.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or use the participant on this web page. Or learn a partial transcript under, evenly edited for readability.
EdSurge: Why does storytelling matter for younger folks?
Melissa Brown: We see these younger folks sort of be a part of the crew not understanding what they’re entering into. They may suppose that they are there for a writing program or a poetry program, or they have not possibly heard of The Moth. And we begin by actually attending to know folks, constructing belief, constructing neighborhood, after which we begin taking part in video games and consuming snacks and sharing very low-stakes truths about ourselves. Storyteller company is central, so no matter you wish to share.
And then we sort of scaffold sneakily as much as sharing longer true private tales. And you simply see these lights go on for folks. For one factor, we’ve got a construction round how we pay attention, that is very a lot that, ‘You have these five minutes, no one is gonna interrupt you. We are all here to hear from you.’ And generally it is the primary time that these younger folks have ever had that occur. I feel for adults, that usually would not occur. And there’s one thing extremely courageous and beneficiant and extraordinary that may occur in that, simply, data that we care about you, about what you need to say. We’re excited about listening to you speak about your life and your expertise and your perspective. That can construct rather a lot of confidence. And we see younger folks actually bloom in doing this work.
What is the strategy of making a Moth-style discuss for younger folks?
Brown: Instead of sitting down with paper and pen and actually drafting line by line such as you may do an essay or a bit of fiction, we’re drafting socially. So we’re drafting in neighborhood with each other. And the magic of that’s that everybody’s accountability in that area is that will help you to the perfect model of your story — your finest model of your story, not anybody else’s finest model. And we do this via an oral apply of telling the story time and again, after which feeding again to that particular person what we heard, what we liked. And we at all times need a storyteller to know that on the finish of their story, there will probably be a cloud of love. So we give them shout outs, we name them, only a detailed praise. Something that we seen in your story, one thing we appreciated, a line that notably stood out to us, one thing that resonated or affected us emotionally.
Aleeza Kazmi: Yeah, simply to color the image a bit of what that particular workshop seemed like. It was folks throughout eleventh and twelfth grade, and I used to be in my spring semester of my senior yr. And so I used to be on the brink of go to school. The different college students have been people who I would not have actually come throughout in my faculty in any other case. It virtually felt like “The Breakfast Club” just a little bit, like, you already know, children from completely different areas, completely different cliques, completely different teams within the faculty coming collectively on this basement room. It was cozy. There have been snacks.
Like Melissa stated, we’re actually constructing that belief with each other. Like these college students who have been basically strangers, we have been strangers to 1 one other, being, you already know, given compliments or constructive suggestions. … And I feel it is actually completely different. Obviously you give suggestions in artistic writing lessons or different issues like that, however it’s all for the aim of writing a paper or one thing. With this, it is nearly feeling good about what you are sharing with the world. And that’s one thing that I do not suppose you are ever given the chance to do as a teenager.
How are the tales you’re listening to from younger folks completely different now than they have been earlier than and throughout the pandemic?
Kazmi: The manner that younger individuals are fascinated about the world round them, and about how they navigate the world is a lot extra advanced and insightful than I bear in mind being at that age.
For season two of Grown, we simply had an interview with a younger storyteller, she’s 16. And my jaw was like being picked up from the ground left and proper throughout that dialog as a result of the dialog was about bullying, which is a heavy matter. She’d skilled bullying. But the compassion she had for the one that was bullying her — fascinated about, ‘Oh, well what is that person going through? And what kind of world are they navigating?’ It simply made me really feel so hopeful and proud of the younger folks at the moment. Knowing that they’ve gone via one thing as traumatic as a pandemic, having misplaced relations, probably, having their life uprooted, I feel has made them extra resilient.
What I’m listening to on Grown is that younger individuals are actually, actually compassionate and now have rather a lot of grace with themselves, which I feel is absolutely essential if you’re navigating your teen years.
Hear the entire interview on The EdSurge Podcast.
