SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance magazine examines power of storytelling to promote social justice

Storytelling can be a powerful classroom tool that helps increase understanding, spark empathy and reduce stress as students tell their own stories and learn from the stories of others, according to the new issue of Teaching Tolerance magazine.

“I’m proud of every issue of Teaching Tolerance – but this one seems, to me, to embody the essence of Teaching Tolerancemore than most,” said Teaching Tolerance Director Maureen Costello. “Storytelling is the closest thing to walking in another’s shoes if you want to see the world from someone else’s point of view. And that is, after all, what we encourage every day.”

The Spring 2015 issue offers educators multiple perspectives on how and why to encourage storytelling. In “Hearing the Lion’s Story,” author Howard Stevenson discusses the racial stress that students of color often feel. To combat this stress, Stevenson encourages teachers to allow children to engage in racial storytelling and to listen to the positive and negative ways their peers experience the realities of their own racial identities.

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