Teaching with Stories
Since ancient times people have gathered to tell stories of their individual, family, and cultural experiences. Stories are part of our being, and the human brain is hard-wired to remember them. Jerome Bruner suggests that stories are how we map the boundaries of culture and signal the consequences of transgressions. Telling stories as life evolves is a way to re-map boundaries as new information comes into the constantly expanding knowledge of what it means to be human.1
A story is defined as a narrative, either true or fictitious, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader.
Today, we may not gather around a campfire as often as we once did, but the average adult still spends at least 6% of their waking day engrossed in stories on their various screens.2
Psychologists tell us that story-telling instantly engages us on an emotional level. Brain scans show that hearing stories activate various areas of the cortex involved in social and emotional processing.3 Stories teach empathy by placing us in other people’s shoes. We come to understand why people behave the way they do and how they overcome obstacles.4
STORIES IN THE CLASSROOM: Stories can build trust between teachers and students, help students view teachers as “real people,” take the fear out of making mistakes, and enhance the relevance of lessons.
Teaching with Stories
Teachers use personal stories in their classrooms for a variety of reasons. First, stories can build trust between teachers and students and help students view teachers as “real people.” Second, when teachers share their stories, students are granted permission to share more authentically about themselves. Third, stories can help students understand that angst is universal and they are not alone when they feel blue, and stories about mishaps in the early days of one’s massage practice help take the fear out of making mistakes. Finally, personal stories enhance the relevance of lessons because they place content in a real-life situation.
Using Story Effectively
To be a sound teaching strategy, any personal stories we use must be relevant to the day’s lesson. With their permission, we can retell a story we have learned from a colleague if it is particularly applicable to lesson content.
Students always love stories about our massage practices, and we should share them. However, we must be careful to ensure client confidentiality is protected. We want to draw attention to the fact that we are changing client names and leaving out identifying details to model this crucial client-therapist boundary explicitly.
Practice telling your story as you would practice presenting your lectures. Identify the elements of the account you wish to highlight and the concepts you want the story to illuminate for students. Find the humor or drama in the story and think carefully about what it is the story models as professional or unprofessional massage therapist behavior.
In some situations, you’ll be telling your story as a way to clarify a point in a lecture. In this case, you won’t pause for student input. However, your account may trigger student stories, so planning a way for students to contribute to the discussion helps channel their energies. Sometimes a story can lead to a series of questions that set the stage for a lecture or discussion activity, and this is ideal. It helps students apply what they learned from the story to critical thinking about the lesson’s content.
What if I Don’t Have a Story?
If you’re worried that you don’t have a relevant story, sit with the other faculty members at your school and ask them to share the stories they tell in their classrooms. Their stories are likely to trigger your stories, and you’ll be able to match stories to related content.
STORIES AT MASSAGE MASTERY ONLINE: We use story-telling in our digital textbooks to set the stage for lessons, to increase learner engagement, as examples to build learner mental representations of important massage therapy concepts, and to help learners understand how concepts operate in the real world of the session room.
Story-Telling in Digital Textbooks
At Massage Mastery Online, we use story-telling to set the stage for lessons and topics or as examples to build learner mental representations of important massage therapy concepts. As a result, students better understand how concepts might play out in the dynamic environment of a session room and see therapists behave professionally and unprofessionally and the resulting consequences. Not only does story-telling make the text more engaging, but it also provides opportunities to understand how vital concepts operate in the real world.
I hope this blog post inspires you to use more story-telling in your classrooms in ways that appeal to students and enhance learning. For more information on stories in education, see the resources listed here.
- Bruner, J.S. Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Harvard University Press, 2002.
- Robson, D. Our Fiction Addiction: Why Humans Need Stories. BBC Culture, 2018.
- Paul, A.M. Your Brain on Fiction. The New York Times, March 17, 2012.
- Dam, R.F, Siang, T.Y. The Power of Story in Building Empathy. Interaction Design Foundation, 2020. Available at interaction-design.org.
- Bruner, J.S. Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Harvard University Press, 2002.
- Campbell, J. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon Books, 1972.
- Campbell, J., Moyers, B. D., Flowers, B. S. The Power of Myth. Highbridge Books, 2007.
- Cooper, C., Orban, D., Henry, R., and Townsend, J. Teaching and Storytelling: An Ethnographic Study of the Instructional Process in the College Classroom. Instructional Science, 12(2),171-190. 1983.