Whilst visiting schools Gareth has had many insightful discussions with teaching staff, which are all valued and utilised as a means of creating and improving his material and programmes.  He has also been praised for his unique delivery style and honesty with the children surrounding his own difficulties with learning, and how he has overcome certain barriers.

One suggestion that has arisen on more than one occasion is for him to deliver a continual professional development (CPD) programme for teaching staff based on his 'Create Your Own Storybook' workshop. The ideas and themes he explores in this workshop stretch beyond the topics of literature and language, which teaching staff were excited by.  They were excited by the prospect of blending their own favoured topics with storytelling and English lessons.  So he has taken this on board, and is now delighted to be able to offer this as a package to both primary and secondary schools.

In Gareth’s words:

Literature can be a tough topic to teach as well as learn; especially to those who have developed an aversion to it due to bad experiences, difficulties learning and understanding language, or because they simply prefer to teach other topics.  It can also seem like an impossible task to teach someone how to tell a story if they have a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia.

The interesting thing that I have come to understand about storytelling is that it isn’t a single topic.  The terms language, literature and stories (written, televised or otherwise) seem to be forever entangled.  However, if you look at what stories contain, and reverse engineer the process of producing a piece of fiction, you see something else entirely.  Stories are inspired by and inspire the world around us.  Storytelling is multimodal in nature, and as such should be taught using a multimodal teaching approach. 

Storytelling is literature and language.  But, it’s also a science, art, IT, maths, games and sports, geography, music, and more.  It has countless applications, and is used as a means of communicating complex ideas in a way that can be universally understood and appreciated.  Storytelling is a way of exploring your emotions, and better understanding why others feel the way they do.  Storytelling teaches us empathy, forgiveness, and gives us clarity.  Storytelling is a useful tool for all to learn. 

Conclusively, I have created a method of delivery, that allows anyone who specialises in any subject to teach storytelling, and show others how to use their own learning style and unique skills to tell a story.

Life is just a story, and we are all authors of our own. 

I can show you how to tell yours, and teach others how to tell theirs.

For more information on my CPD programme for teaching staff, please contact me.