To read the minutes of the 2005 meeting of the Folklore & Education Section, click here.

Education sessions

In 2005, the Folklore and Education Section sponsored three sessions at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society: Digital Storytelling, What I Learned From My Students, and The Role of Theory in Folklife in Education. These sessions were well attended and provided folklorists in education with an opportunity to share their work, their questions, and their thoughts.

Digital Storytelling

Sue Eleuterio led this workshop which provided participants with an introduction to digital storytelling concepts and resources. The focus of the workshop was on creating a personal template for a digital story so that teachers could use their own templates as models for their students. Computers and the Internet make it possible for students to share their work globally. Digital stories use student interest in computers, video, audio, and technology to help them focus on reading and writing skills to create a good story using all the elements of narrative. Workshop participants did not learn the technical aspects of digital production. Rather they were guided to other resources for help with this part of the process.

What I Learned From My Students

Betty Belanus moderated this forum in which the participants, who have all been teachers in various capacities, shared stories about moments when they became learners instead of teachers, as students opened eyes to a new insight or made an observation that caused them to rethink and reassess our discipline, teaching style, and their world view. Once the panelists shared their experiences, the floor was opened for audience participation.

The Role of Theory in Folklife in Education

This forum, brought together by Jan Rosenberg, explored the success of folklife in education efforts and how they have not been guided by any one theory. The participants presented outlines on their thoughts of what a theory for folklife in education might look like. The forum participants explored theory from four standpoints: social base theory, writing theory, English as a Second Language, and pragmatic progressivism.

Saturday workshop

Looking back on the dozen workshops the Folklore and Education Section and National Network for Folk Arts in Education have organized for AFS since 1994, there's not a dud in the bunch; they are all success stories. Each year folklorists, teachers, artists, and students have shown off their work for a rapt audience of AFS members, local educators, and artists, giving us creative and adaptable teaching models, fresh approaches, and deep thinking about pedagogy and culture.

The 12th Annual Folklore and Education Workshop, " Learning Literacy: Homegrown Success Stories," focused on folklore and the teaching of writing at all levels and introduced us to remarkable young people and their stories. We laughed, cried, and shook our heads in amazement and gratitude for the students and their gifted teachers.

The 2005 theme, "Learning Literacy: Homegrown Success Stories," developed because AFS was meeting in Georgia, where Laurie Sommers has brought her many years of folklore-in-education experience to bear, founding the South Georgia Folklife Project and developing Folkwriting: Lessons on Place, Heritage, and Tradition for the Georgia Classroom (www.valdosta.edu/folkwriting).

Laurie began the morning by introducing Folkwriting through hands-on activities and multimedia demonstrations. She and Diane Howard, an English teacher, designed the guide with and for language arts and social studies teachers so any teacher could use the lessons without having to do a lot of research and preparation. Their goal was to create resources and tools for students to investigate and write about their own cultures and communities. The comprehensive lessons are based on the premise that students write best when they write what they know, a tenet of the National Writing Project (www.nwp.org). In fact, several folklorists are NWP trainers (Elizabeth Simons, Bonnie Sunstein, Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, Sue Eleuterio, and Joanne Mulcahy, for example).

Laurie Sommers describes her Folkwriting guide.

Peggy Corbett, a teacher trainer with the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project, describes the community heritage projects of her Cherokee High School students. To read an excerpt from one of Corbett's student's works, click here.

Renee Morris of Gainesville, GA, was the 2005 Robinson-Roeder-Ward Fellow. She and seven of her middle school language arts students were among presenters at our annual Saturday workshop during the Atlanta AFS meeting. She uses the guide "Folkwriting" throughout her teaching. To read Morris' account of her students' work, click here.

Jo Radner and a Gainesville Middle School student perform a skit about learning to interview.

Gainesville Middle School students enthralled listeners with their radio essays.

Middle schoolers being middle schoolers!

Laurie led us to Renee Morris of Gainesville, GA, a middle school teacher she trained, and the recipient of the 2005 Robinson-Roeder-Ward prize. Renee and seven of her students from Gainesville Middle School shared the Folkwriting processes they used to create radio essays. Renee noted that using folklore allows students to express things they know but don’t always have the opportunity to express; reaches students of all cultural backgrounds and abilities; engages students; teaches literacy skills they need; and builds unity within the school community. She also said this approach “personalizes diversity.”

Renee has received grants from Teaching Tolerance to fund some of her projects with students. Students have collected ghost stories, immigration experiences, and family folklore. Each year they publish a book of their essays, poetry, and stories. For a recent radio essay assignment, Renee decided to start with something light, suggesting to students that they find a humorous incident as a focus because she feels they are exposed to so many tragedies. She played David Sedaris and Bailey White CDs as examples of funny radio essays, but students gravitated to personal challenges: the death of a cherished aunt, loss of a grandmother, a father’s frightening experiences as an immigrant, leaving a homeland. After they read their moving essays, students described the process of writing them. One student said the essay allowed her to let out her grief, made a space where she could finally cry. Another compared his parents’ love story to Romeo and Juliet. The students reveled in their writing. For example, a young woman wrote about her love for baseball, how it makes her so happy she “can hear the dirt.” Renee noted that these students are validating their relationships and deepening their memory of important people and occurrences and seeing how they connect to literature and to history. To read more about Morris' students' work, click here.

After a break for coffee, pastries, and plenty of Kleenex, we engaged with two high school teachers and two former students who had loved their fieldwork and writing so much they asked to come to AFS. The Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project (www.kennesaw.edu/english/kmwp) came to folklore on its own, as students of Peggy Corbett and Karen McIntyre began documenting community life and history in 1999. Over the years, their advanced placement English classes have chosen many different projects, but they’ve all been student-directed. Peggy and Karen concurred with Renee Morris, saying they don’t always know where their students are going, but by letting them take the lead, they excel.

Over the years, Kennesaw students have restored the 100-year-old graveyard of an African American church; tried to save an antebellum house from demolition as they studied transition from a rural community to a suburb, and then made a documentary video about the house when they failed; and collected legends about a controversial local Civil War hero and--through vigorous research--learned he had harbored southern resisters to the war, to the dismay of some in the community.

One of the students, now in college, said that some high school classmates had initially balked at this kind of work because they were so focused on advanced placement courses and college admissions. She has learned that the fieldwork, required journal writing, repeated reflection, and producing a multimedia project really pay off in college: “Professors want to know my thoughts and opinions, not formulaic work.” She also finds that the high school learning experiences she remembers are these extended community-based projects, which still live within her. To read an excerpt from this student's work, click here.

Evaluations from the Saturday workshop included these statements:

“This reminds me why I went to grad school in folklore.”

“This was the best education meeting I’ve ever attended. I learned so much from the student and teacher presenters. They were a real inspiration and have given me so much material to take back to my classroom and try to adopt to my special ed students. Thank you.”

This was the third year when our participation level was lower than expected, perhaps because of the lure of other sessions scheduled on Saturday morning that appeal to the same audience, and perhaps because of a failure to tell our story effectively to potential constituencies.

The quality of the workshops has not diminished at all, but competition from simultaneous conference events is tough. Tim Lloyd and the program committees are committed to our Saturday morning slot, but as the number of sessions grows each year, there’s no way to guarantee other events are not going to contend for the same audience.

As our thoughts turn to the 2006 meeting Milwaukee, the place where these workshops started in 1994, how can we more effectively attract an audience? The Milwaukee meeting will be a time to celebrate but also to meditate: how can we best celebrate our return to Milwaukee and capture some of what we have learned in thirteen years? The 2006 Program Committee includes Anne Pryor and Ruth Olson, who are already thinking about an excellent theme for our Saturday morning workshop. Ruth has proposed that we devote our insider celebration and reflections to a session or two during the regular AFS schedule. Make a commitment to contribute and to attend!