Stories help bind people together, forge group identities and create a sense of common culture and understanding. Usually, the first storytellers that children know are parents and family members, so listening to stories is often a known, safe and culturally relevant method of imparting knowledge and important values. Whether the stories are family stories, folk and fairy tales, myths, legends, or from literature... if you can put the book down and simply tell the story to your students, you can connect with them through an ancient and compelling form of communication.

As people listen to stories, they form images in their minds that are stored in the memory as symbols. Studies have shown that humans retain only 20% of what they read, but they recall 80% of symbols. The mental images created through storytelling stimulates appropriate neural development in the brain.

The following excerpt is from "Why Children Need Stories: Storytelling and Resiliency" by Linda Fredericks, which will be featured in the upcoming book - The Healing Heart, Storytelling To Promote Healthy Individuals, Families and Communities.

When children want to hear a story again and again, these connecting neural pathways are strengthened between different parts of the brain, allowing the child to incorporate additional learning. Children begin to understand the relationships between the symbols such as animals and heroes and dragons and the values that they stand for. The language of stories is through metaphor... children will know that while the story may not be "true", they can still hear the truth in the story. When children share the stories they have learned or create, they experience the joy of knowing that they carry the knowledge within themselves that will hold the attention of others without using television, video games or computers!

Stories convey the most profound of life's lessons. Children hear that there are other ways of thinking, feeling and acting, so they may learn through the characters in the story how to face situations with greater strength and wisdom. Many of the great stories from throughout the world teach that there is hope, even in the darkest of situations. Stories are also effective in increasing tolerance and understanding of people from other cultures. Storytelling can promote social competence by showing the young people which qualities cause relationships to thrive and which actions sow distrust and discord.

Stories allow listeners to explore sensitive issues in a safe and non-threatening way. Storytelling stimulates the imagination. Recent studies have shown that children who lack imagination are not only prone to failure in school but are far more susceptible to violence. Such children cannot imagine alternatives to their immediate perceptions of the situation before them and have less insight into other possible choices. Storytelling builds resiliency because it provides appropriate models for behavior and reminds young people that they are not alone in their struggles and their pain.1

Storytelling is as old as the hills and as new as the sunrise. There is no one right way to do it. Your audience will share the moment directly with you and the characters. You are all in this tale together and can all come back side by side in the ever after of a good story. Your stories will live on with your students long after they have left your classroom, some to be carried for the rest of their lives. So tell them your favorites: silly, sad, journeys, challenges, told from the point of view of the smallest mouse to the tallest giant. Your students will ask for more and more... and they will never forget the teacher who told them stories!

"If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want your children to be even more brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales." Albert Einstein