Kentucky: Kentucky Arts Council

Mary Hamilton grew up on a Kentucky farm where telling stories was considered more of a moral failing than a potential career. She now tells stories in her straightforward “just talking’ style, serving up an eclectic story repertoire featuring generous helpings of Kentucky narrative traditions and world folktales along with a smidgen of myths, tall tales, legends, fiction and true stories. Mary’s tellings have delighted students at hundreds of schools and all ages at family events and storytelling festivals throughout the United States. The Kentucky School Media Association presented Mary with the 1999-2000 Jesse Stuart Award for her work in storytelling in Kentucky’s schools. Mary's most recent CD, "Sisters All...and One Troll" earned a Storytelling World Winner Award for Storytelling Recordings and a Parents' Choice Gold Award.

My primary approach to any residency or TIP project is to talk with the teacher or teachers involved in developing project goals for involving the students in the art of storytelling. Favorite projects have included:

A ten-day TIP with at-risk preschoolers which includes

telling them folktales to develop listening and imagination skills,
leading them in informal reenactments of the folktale
soliciting and writing down tales dictated by individual students, and
student informal dramatizations of the student-authored tales to use listening skills and to, most importantly, help establish for students the connection between the stories they dictate, the “marks” written on the paper, and the actions of the actors on the “stage.” This project uses storytelling for literacy development – a very appropriate preschool activity.

10-day projects with fourth and sixth graders that involves using telling to develop and revise personal narratives (fourth) and memoirs (sixth). Oral storytelling is used to develop the students’ stories; rough drafts are written in my absence; then oral discussions and supportive artistic critique sessions are used to “talk” and “tell through” possible revisions of their rough drafts. Storytelling and storytelling coaching methods are employed to take advantage of the “power of talk” to sort through, develop and uncover “what really happened that mattered to the student.” Through modeling and artist-led practice, students increase their ability to effectively question one another about “the work” to help classmates discover the heart of the story. Variations of this project for younger grades have incorporated informal story mapping, lots of “storytalk,” and have culminated in dictated or written rough drafts. These projects involve integrating the art of storytelling as an ongoing partner in the writing process.
Multiple five-, ten-, & twenty-day projects with many age levels focusing on student retelling of folktales. Depending upon the length of the project and the goals of the teachers, my involvement varies from in-depth exploration of a single story over multiple meetings with a class (each student could certainly retell it after!) to projects in which every student in the class learns a different story to tell (teacher involvement in my absence must be high to accomplish this goal – steps include story selection, story learning without memorizing the words, and story presentation along with modeling of effective story coaching so students and teacher can help one another when I am gone). These projects involve students in an in-depth exploration and practice of the art of storytelling.