PROGRAMS
The Tennessee Storytelling Association produces two educational programs: Learning & Growing Through Storytelling and the Oral Heritage Workshop series.
LEARNING
& GROWING THROUGH STORYTELLING
An Educational Storytelling Project
Developed by Doc McConnell and Guerry McConnell with
the assistance of Storytellers and Workshop Leaders for the Tennessee
Storytelling Association
This program's mission is to introduce storytelling as a folk art form to elementary and middle school students as well as teachers through presentations, instruction, and workshops. These educational presentations encourage students’ appreciation of language, culture and imaginative expression.
The educational philosophy behind the program is that storytelling in the classroom and school libraries is an integral part of learning and is an effective tool for developing students’ listening skills, speaking skills, and ability to create mental images.
This program serves students by providing classroom and school libraries with quality storytelling presentations and instruction by experienced professionals in order to foster oral language development and motivate reading and writing, Also, the program offers teacher workshops on how to use storytelling effectively in the classroom.
This storytelling project is an educational offering of the Tennessee Storytelling Association, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Contact TSA for further information about this program.
ORAL HERITAGE
WORKSHOP
Linking Communities with Their Pasts
Learn how to respectfully collect personal stories,
archive them and preserve the identity of your family, church,
reminiscence for clients, historic site, school and community. This
workshop is beneficial to teachers, genealogy enthusiasts, librarians,
healthcare workers, activity directors and many others.
TSA is proud to host these workshops across the state.
The first workshop was co-hosted by the Hawkins County Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities (HCAPTA) and held in Historic Rogersville, Tennessee at the H.B. Stamps Library and Senior Center on Saturday, November 5, 2005.
Workshop leader Katie Doman, is an Appalachian Studies scholar who served on the English faculty at Tusculum College for 12 years. In 1993, Katie helped collect oral histories for the Hidden Heroines of Northeast Tennessee project. With her academic background and experience she helps workshop participants to identify and bring out their own stories as they learn to interview and collect historical and personal family stories from others.
In partnership with Smoky Mountain Storytellers Guild and Maryville College in Maryville, TSA produced a workshop in April of 2006., Long time TSA member, Millie Sieber, whose background includes 30 years teaching (grades 1 through adult) and dedication to storytelling, was the workshop leader. She has developed her own oral history piece compiled of her great-grandmother’s experiences as a child during the Civil War.
Also in April of 2006, in partnership with the Albert Gore, Sr. Oral History Project at MTSU, a workshop was be presented for the TSA Conference by Director, Lisa Pruitt. Lisa has offered the Gore Center as a repository of any collections that come out of the TSA program.
Additional workshops are being planned across the state. Southern Foodways Alliance has offered to work with us for a future workshop in Memphis.
© 2007 Tennessee Storytelling Association