Becoming a Storytelling Teacher (Steven Brubaker)

Description

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What does it take to cultivate love in our students? As teachers, we don’t just want to transfer important information to our students. We want to change their lives. We want them to love God with their heart, soul, mind, and strength. In Steven’s words, “Stories are one of the most powerful tools available to us as teachers for shaping loves.”

If you want to shape your students’ loves, carefully choose your stories. Steven Brubaker is the administrator of Faith Builders Educational Programs. He began his work in education as a principal and teacher in a grade school. In this talk, Steven implies that, in fact, there’s no avoiding the reality that you will shape the loves of your students by the story of your life and the stories that leak out of you or that you reference or approve. As you evaluate the loves of your students ask yourself how you’ve contributed to those loves, good and bad, by the stories that you’ve given to them. You are in a position to bend the desires of your students. Stories wield powerful influence in shaping and nurturing the hearts of your students.

Steven addresses numerous practical questions related to infusing your teaching with stories.

• How do you use stories across the disciplines
• How can you become a collector of stories?
• Where do you find stories?
• How do you use the stories that you’ve collected?

 

Included in Steven’s advice are systems for recording, organizing, and retrieving stories and tips for collecting stories through book sales, your personal experience, your reading, and our history.

 

Book titles referenced in the talk:

• The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal
• The Rest of the Story by Paul Harvey, Jr.
• Let Me Tell You a Story, by Tony Campolo
• Two Brothers One Mission by Mary Fretz
• Chariots in the Smoke by Margaret Epp
• Coals of Fire by Elizabeth Bauman
• They Loved Their Enemies by Marian Hostetler
• Annie Funk by Sharon Yoder
• Small Man of Nanataki by Liam Nolan
• Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, David Hazard
• The Brigade by Howard Blum
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
• Dragon’s Gate by Laurence Yep
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Les Miserable by Victor Hugo
• God Spoke Tibetan by Allan Maberly
• Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop, Janet Joly
• Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
• Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles
• Faith the Cow by Susan Bame Hoover

 

Links

• This talk was first published as “Practices That Nurture God Love” https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/practices-that-nurture-god-love-steven-brubaker/
• Other recordings from Teacher’s Week 2013: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/series/teachers'-week-2013
• Questions for the Q & R episode:https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/KQnYsYgPAq
• Contact us: https://thedockforlearning.org/contact-us/
• 3-minute feedback: https://forms.office.com/r/1G564EGQkn
• library.upenn.edu
• CAM Books
• Christian Learning Resource
• Christian Light