Students engage in storytelling techniques that highlight cultural responsiveness in the classroom. Using self-to-text analogies, participants re-create tales with folklife context through exercises that highlight integrating language, calendar customs, ceremonies, festivities, occupational folklore, family sayings, folk beliefs, foodways, clothing, orally-told stories, songs, music and dance.

As cultural storytelling is the heart of human connection, exercises also engage in storytelling techniques that invoke the five senses. A multi-day residency enriches the students’ experience through deeper connections with the Language Arts standards and SEL competencies as students rewrite and perform fairy tales, folktales, myths, historical tales, or legends based on a selected theme.