\u27Tater Eyes and \u27Possum Houses: A New Role for Storytelling in Place-based Pedagogy

Abstract

The storytelling tradition is as ancient as these mountains. Whether it’s folktales about trickster animals, ghost stories, or personal narratives, tellers and listeners mutually create a story space, a shared internal world that exists only in the memory of the teller and mind of the listener. How can we, as educators in Appalachia, use storytelling in place-based pedagogy? This reader\u27s theater, co-created by undergraduate researchers who participated in the 2013 Appalachian Teaching Project, transcended the bounds of the traditional classroom and took students to the fields, gardens, and homes of local elders. Students not only preserved heirloom seeds and documented dying foodways practices but also listened deeply and intentionally. They came to view the storytellers as valuable, respected individuals instead of uneducated, powerless, poverty-stricken old folks. Such is the power of story