{"id":1852,"date":"2020-02-08T13:24:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T18:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1852"},"modified":"2020-02-08T13:24:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T18:24:00","slug":"a-leap-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1852","title":{"rendered":"A Leap of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Leap of Faith<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

It was back in the \u201880s. I had been teaching for 7 years and was asked by the Middle School that I had worked in to act in their musical play, \u201cHans Christian Andersen\u201d. They wanted to cast me as Hans. I took a leap of faith and agreed. I\u2019ve written about this before (<\/span>http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=483<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 I had never been in a play before, and certainly never told stories. I was enthralled by the reaction of the audience to the play and my performance, so much so, that I decided to find out more about this thing called storytelling. I read books about it and discovered that there was an organization called N.A.P.P.S. (The National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling). I even convinced my school district to send me to down to Jonesborough, Tennessee one weekend in October to the National Storytelling Festival (I went the following year also). I was hooked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming back to my class after that first week in Tennessee, I decided to test out my storytelling skills with my class. I decided that I would take one daily reading aloud time each week and tell a story instead. For the first one, I found the story I wanted to try. It was a Jack tale, \u201cJack and the Robbers.\u201d It was a long story, so I decided after reading it a few times I would tell it in two parts. The first part, one week, and finish with the second part the following week. What I didn\u2019t expect was that when I finished the first part, my class wouldn\u2019t let me stop. They demanded the second part right then. So I told it, even though I hadn\u2019t practiced it. <\/span>(<\/span>http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=24<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

The following weeks I told more tales. It became a part of my program. I even got students involved in telling tales.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Telling stories also solved one of my anxious activities as a teacher, Open Houses! When my mindset changed from giving a lecture to parents about my curriculum and class expectations to telling them a story about my curriculum and expectations, Open Houses became mostly anxiety-free. I even added some real stories to my presentations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Storytelling, as well as writing, has become an important part of my life and who I am. I\u2019m glad that I made that leap and took the part of Hans Christian Andersen. It\u2019s amazing how one role in one play can inspire you. Of course, considering what happened, who knows what I would be doing now and how great I\u2019d be if the play I was in was about Thomas Edison.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Leap of Faith It was back in the \u201880s. I had been teaching for 7 years and was asked by the Middle School that I had worked in to act in their musical play, \u201cHans Christian Andersen\u201d. They wanted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,175,2,7],"tags":[67,16],"class_list":["post-1852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-stories","category-storytelling","category-storytelling-general","category-story-writing","tag-harvey-heilbrun","tag-storytelling"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1853,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions\/1853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}