Liz Warren | Storyteller

“Everybody! I need your help to tell this story. When I go like this can everyone yell SLOP!”I flung both of my arms above my head, maybe as an exclamation, maybe as a conductor of my classroom of fourth grade vocalists. “Okay, ready?….  Up went my arms. A loud “SLOP” rang out through the classroom.…

I was raised in a family of educators. My mother, Everlyn S. Franks, taught first grade for many years. She use these techniques and concepts in her classroom many years before scientists and researchers figured it out.   She knew Storytelling would develop lifelong skills for children: cognitive understanding, communication, listening, language, and writing skills…

Smells bypass the thalamus. Smells go straight to the olfactory bulb, or the brain’s smell processing center. This bulb is directly linked to the amygdala (responsible for emotion) and hippocampus (responsible for memory). The olfactory bulb’s proximity to the brain’s emotion and memory centers might explain why scent can immediately trigger a vivid memory or…

Like many Americans, I am not one but many. My roots have been planted and dug up many times over. My mother's family all came from Ireland and migrated here in the mid-1800s looking for opportunity and a fair shake. They started out in New York and then moved westward to settle in towns and…

Experts have found that pretend play affords children opportunities to express different processes. Cognitive, affective and interpersonal processes are all important for creativity.  Storytelling can teach lessons without making children feel that they are being lectured to.  Storytelling can also promote creativity and teach reading structure.  Both playing and listening to stories are a fun…

Who is a full service traditional storyteller? Well to answer this question let’s break it up into two; full service storyteller and traditional storyteller.  A traditional storyteller is someone who tells (not reads) stories from the oral tradition. These are stories from the preliterate societies. A full service storyteller is someone who can tell any…

Let’s make magic! …by using imagination! Yes, your imagination! You know, the willy-wonka-style contraption making inventions in your head. There is logic to what I’m proposing. I swear. Just follow the trail of everlasting gobstoppers. Elizabeth Ellis explains that, as storytellers, “When we help others use their imagination, they make an image, and something magic…

When I started working with the residents of the Westward Ho, I quickly saw the need for residents to be seen and heard. I recalled attending a storytelling event during the holidays and remembered how connected I felt to the tellers on the stage even though I had never met them. That is what the…

You can’t hate someone when you know their story. I remember reading that line in one of the texts for our Personal Stories class and it has stuck with me ever since. It assumes that humans are inherently bound to each other. Many times we forget about that connection and hate and suspicion grows. When…

I was asked to give a storytelling presentation to entrepreneurship students at ASU in October.  The instructor wanted his students to learn storytelling skills that would serve them through their careers in business, because ultimately, they are in the business of people, and people connect to stories.  He had spent some time earlier in the…

It is the end of the fall semester – the last class meeting of STO 297: Creating and Telling Personal Stories. We gather eagerly to hear these last few personal stories thoughtfully crafted by our classmates. They do not disappoint. I have avoided telling personal stories since 1999 when I earned my storytelling certificate. I…

One of the weekly assignments for the Personal Storytelling Class at South Mountain Community College is to listen to all kinds of personal stories.  One week I chose to listen to Elizabeth Ellis tell the “College Aid” story.  I am fascinated by her cadence, her humor, and her use of pauses.  Though she sits, she…