[00:00:00] How do we reconnect when we come back after that long period of isolation? What do we do? We share our stories. We share what our experience was. We share how we handled something. And when we share those stories, we're rebuilding community connection. We're finding where our stories matched up and we're finding where they didn't and how we can have empathy for the places that it didn't and how we can rebuild ourselves. And we do that largely through the sharing of stories. Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing in Education Podcast. The space for Education Meets Resilience. I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education. Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, [00:01:00] prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools. Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started. Welcome back to the podcast, where today I'm joined by Rachael Harrington, a storyteller and teaching artist whose work grew out of classrooms, libraries, and art spaces. Rachael began her career as middle school art teacher and illustrator, and her path into storytelling, unfolded through improv, folktails, and work with English Language Learners starting in her mom's own library. During the pandemic, she brought storytelling and art making online through projects like Morning Circle, which has worked to create spaces of connection for educators, families, and kids at home as well. And at the heart of Rachael's work is a very simple idea that storytelling is more than just performance. It's also about how we create spaces for people to show up and be honest. So I'm so excited for Rachael to be here in conversation with us. And Rachael, welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm [00:02:00] wildly excited to be here. Yes, and I'll also mention that this is a very rare opportunity because very, very seldomly do I have an opportunity to meet my guests in person, but Rachael and I actually don't live too far from each other, so we actually were able to meet in person. We were going through our geographies. It's like, wait a second, just a few blocks up that way. So it was really, really cool to meet her for coffee last month before we had this conversation around the holiday season. So great to see you again now in 2D. So good to see you as well. So Rachael, you began your journey as a middle school art teacher and an illustrator before you even really dipped into what storytelling is all about. And I wanted to see, based upon your time and your work from the art classroom, how does that period from a different life, if you will, also really start to quietly shape how you see storytelling and what you do now that is outside of schools, but still connects to teaching children? So I've always been drawn to storytelling [00:03:00] in all of its forms, and so I think one of my very early memories of the richness of stories came through picture books. And as a kid I was always surrounded by picture books and my mom was a fantastic read aloud, uh, reader and so I think I really fell in love with illustration early on, and I could really connect with the way that an illustrator could speak into a story that was being laid out on the page and when the books were being read aloud, to me, being able to kind of hear the voices of the images that I was seeing on the page was a really strong connection for me. And so as I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I always had this fascination with [00:04:00] the idea of being able to take a story that's in your head or in your bones from having the history of the story in your life somehow . How do you take that kind of like, untangible part of the story and put it onto the page into a tangible part of the story? So I think that's what kind of drew me towards illustration and drawing. And then I always wanted to be around people and help other people access their own creativity, and so I was really drawn to art education. So taking my interest in drawing and painting and illustration and putting that into an environment where I could be working directly with kids and with people to inspire them and to help them understand their own language of creativity, their own language of expressing a story. [00:05:00] So yeah, I think I've always been fascinated by how stories can kind of express themselves. You're making me think about the work that actually comes from the arts classroom. So if you were to take us back, if you're comfortable, to that time when you were teaching middle school art, what are some things that you learned about, just the environment of what happens in the art classroom? For example, we've had a couple English teachers on our show as well, and what we talk about there is how writing acts as this anchor for students to express themselves through writing. We recently had art therapist, Lisa Kay, Dr. Lisa Kay from Temple University on the program as well, and she talks about how when we act as a facilitator for arts, we're also able to draw emotions out of students, but through very careful boundaries. And during your time in the classroom, what has art taught you about the way that young people choose to express themselves? I think one of the big things [00:06:00] for me that I learned working with young people and art is the power of an open-ended question, or I guess another way to say that might be like the power of the prompt. I went to Pratt to study art education and it was a, a phenomenal program. I absolutely adored my time and it really helped me think not just as an art teacher, but just as a human being. But the core of my teaching philosophy is the invitation to play. Which is really more about creating an environment where the student or the learner or the listener can come in and interact with the idea without it being imposed. So laying out the art materials in an inviting way that invites curiosity, [00:07:00] that invites exploration. So it's less about me saying, this is how you draw a face, right? It's more about like, ooh, these drawing pencils can give you all different kinds of lines. Let's explore with all these different drawing materials and, oh, look, here's a mirror. Should we try? What do we see in the mirror? You know? And so kind of just inviting that exploration, instead of imposing super specific assignments. It's just like opening up that invitation to play. Mm-hmm. To explore, to be playful. I love that invitation of creative liberty from the student in the classroom really, because especially in K 12 systems, we've seen less and less of that as instruction seems to lean towards rigidness and compliance. I actually had a student by the time we air, she'll have been long onto our podcast here, but she's airing next week and she talks about how in [00:08:00] education she has seen a lot more of students focusing on compliance in the systemic outcome, than actually gaining something for their own value as a student who's learning to flourish through knowledge. Yeah. So knowing that there's still philosophies from educators out there like yourself that are trying to take on that element of play into the classroom is so valuable, and thank you again for sharing that with us as well. Yeah. And so I, I, I do think, I think there's something so important about teaching our students no matter what age they are, the importance of play and also incidentally, the teachers also like everybody needs to play and play is so, so important, not just for building imagination and creativity, but also I think that play is very important across all ages because it inspires innovation, but it also teaches you how to sort [00:09:00] through your ideas. It teaches you how to order your ideas and it teaches you I think an element of like grit and determination when you find that idea, like, you play and you experiment a little bit, and through that you start forming a direction to go in, and you learn how to form an idea and stick with it and see where it goes. Mm-hmm. So I just, instead of that idea between exploration versus compliance, I think when we learn how to play or when we allow play to happen. Right. Because I think everybody naturally knows how to play. Yeah. But when we allow, when we foster it in the classroom, we are also giving students not only creative thinking skills, but we're giving them the ability to learn how to form their ideas and stick with it and see it through. Absolutely. And so when we [00:10:00] talk about play and even performance in the realm of storytelling mm-hmm. That's a whole different realm of expression as well. But it requires the same components, I guess, that are in some ways sort of magical to the imagination. Mm-hmm. In order to be successful. So, then what does play look like in what you're doing now with storytelling and what are some things that you've learned about the way communication works between art and the sense of performance that you're doing currently? Ooh, I love that question. Um, it's a really good question 'cause, oh, I don't know. I feel like, a, huge core of what I do as a storyteller is play. Okay, so where do I start? Let's see. When you are storytelling and you are the teller and you have a group of listeners, to me, storytelling is really about that dynamic communication that you are having with [00:11:00] yourself and your listeners, and you have the structure of the story, you have the plot line of the story, but then, you're off of the page with the story, so you have to remain playful as the teller of the story because you need to release your brain from the saying the right words. And you need to be very connected to your audience and understand how they're feeling. Recognize facial expressions to see if they're tracking, if a little bit of explanation is needed. And so in and of itself, releasing yourself from saying the exact right thing and instead engaging in direct human connection. That in and of itself is playful because you have to stay agile and play. Play is agile. Play is not really a fixed thing. You flex and you flow. And as the teller, [00:12:00] that's what you're doing with your audience. You're flexing and you're flowing. You notice that your audience is like giggling at a certain tone of a character's voice. Mm-hmm. And so me, I pick up on that and I just like, I take that all the way to the Academy Awards, right? Like I am like at a hundred with whatever tone it was that I picked up on, and I'm doing that for the rest of the story. So it's playful. And then for me, the way that I, present my performances and structure my performances, I'm almost always looking for ways to invite the audience to become the tellers along with me. And I don't use a ton of props or puppets or anything if I do, which I do sometimes, but it's usually pretty light. And so that's playful because that is an invitation to the listeners to fully imagine the story that they're hearing [00:13:00] in their own heads. So their imaginations are firing up. But then also like we get to create this little group together that is playfully bringing this story to life. So if there's a big wind storm in the story, I could just say that there's a windstorm, but I'm usually inviting the listeners to create the sound of the windstorm or to like, how would your body move? How would your arms move if you were in a windstorm? And we're creating the environment of the story just with what we have available to us in that exact moment. And that's play right? It's like working with what you have and creating something out of what you already have. So I love that. Tell us a little bit more about the day in the life. And I know every day is very fluid and different, like play itself, but tell us, like for example, today, you mentioned that you were doing something this morning as well. Tell us what a day in the life looks like [00:14:00] with the work that you're doing in storytelling for young people. Yeah, I mean, like you said, every day for me is very different. I personally work mostly with K-5 groups. I do work outside of that as well. But some days I am visiting a school. Like this morning, I have a preschool residency. So once a week I'm going into the preschool and I'm visiting all of the preschool classrooms one at a time. And I tell, we have like our, we call it our long story, so that's where we end. And then before that we were doing a bunch of like warmup games and short little stories that all tie into the theme of the long story. So some days it's residency work where I'm kind of working with the same group of kids repeatedly, over and over, same day every week kind of a thing. Other times I am working with K to five schools to bring assembly [00:15:00] programs in or classroom visits, and a lot of times that looks like I visit each grade per day. So I'll do like six days in a school, classroom visit, telling interactive folk tales on a theme in the classrooms, and then we end with a big celebratory assembly program. So that's kind of like the school programming that I do, but sometimes I'm working with libraries, so I'm creating library programs or children's museums where we're taking the themes from the shows that are up in the space and bringing that into family audiences performance. I have my podcast, the Fairytale Art Cart, so that usually takes up a day or two of my work week just producing my episodes. I always want to have an element of in-person storytelling with everything that I do. 'cause I think that's so core to my personal mission as a storyteller. So I also produce live recordings of the [00:16:00] podcast. So, every day is incredibly different but I just love it so much and the, on the days that I am. With those listeners and we're getting to play, I just feel like so lit up about that because there's just so much purpose and mission in the work for me, especially as I think about like AI and what that is bringing to communities and to schools. And it's not all bad, but I find a lot of mission and purpose in the fact that storytelling is very immediate human connection and I think it's really purposeful for me to help give kids and families and educational staffs skills and inspiration to be able to share a story with somebody. Like how do you share a story? Just like the skill of making eye contact for [00:17:00] a sustained amount of time in and of itself is like a gift that we can give each other it's the gift of our attention. So there's all these like skills within storytelling. These like human communication skills that I just love being able to work with groups to inspire in communities and help people like work on and be inspired to go and try beyond just the storytelling performance. But I see that storytelling is also a major sense of offering authenticity to large groups of people as well. Mm-hmm. And you're reminding me of a conversation from a New York University based educator, Dr. Susan B. Newman, who used to be the assistant secretary of No Child Left Behind in Title One areas. Ah mm-hmm. In 2001 to 2003. And what Dr. Newman says from my podcast early in November about the time that we were meeting for the first time is when I was speaking with her as well. She says that children [00:18:00] today are not reading essentially. And the reason is because they are not taught to appreciate it and enjoy it, and it's, again, a form of compliance. If you think about i-Ready in the schools, the tool itself is meaningful. I'm in Rachael's face as well as I say that the tool itself is quite meaningful. However, it forces students into a sense of compliance. I know that when I was teaching middle school, i-Ready was an assignment. It was also a punishment if they didn't do something. Oh. Mm-hmm. You didn't turn in your work, go add 15 more minutes of iReady to your week. Mm-hmm. And because of that, students are taught to see reading and literacy as punishment. And I wanted to ask, with the work that you're doing in live storytelling, you've been doing this now for half a decade, right? And crazy. Have you been following the same students long enough or the same schools? The same locations long enough to gather some evidence that shows how [00:19:00] students have transformed their outlook on literacy? And appreciating stories because of working with you. Tell me about that. What are some testimonies towards that? Sure. So thankfully, I have a couple of schools that I have years long partnerships with that I go back every year and sometimes the program looks, a little bit different depending on the themes that the school's working on. But, I'm lucky enough. I mean, I love working all over the place, but with these particular years, long partnership schools, a couple of them are actually like in the neighborhoods that I live my life in as well. And so I think one really interesting and fun testimonial towards what you're talking about is I will see some of the kids that I worked with in third grade. Mm-hmm. And also eighth or ninth, right? [00:20:00] Yeah. Yeah. They're like, they're in middle school and they're like, oh, miss Rachael. Hey, how are you? Oh, remember when you told us the story about the lady who lives in the vinegar bottle? Oh, man. I love that story. And they'll see me at the playground with my kids. I'm there with my own kids and they see me and like we start talking about the stories that we told in the residency when they were in third grade. So I think that that has been a really special thing for me to see that, the power of storytelling has really stuck with the kids and they remember these stories like in detail. You know, they're like recounting the story thing pretty. I love that. It's pretty cool to be able to see that and to have that connection through story with students that I worked with. Years ago. And that's exactly what it takes. One [00:21:00] transformative moment in elementary school to really foster that lifelong learning for literacy through middle school and high school and beyond. So I'm so glad to hear that testimony is there. You are making me think about like how you just said how in the park students recount their stories from half a decade ago and it builds an instant human connection based upon a 5-year-old memory at that time and when we were meeting in person back in November, i'm remembering how you said that during the COVID era, how it was very, very isolating for your own children as well. Yeah. To be in school during the COVID era, as it was for many of us as well. So when you began the Morning Circle during the COVID shutdown, what are some ways that you saw students really breaking the boundaries of what was a very isolating time, and how is that helping them now, and especially for educators like myself that are on edge every year to year or term to term, wondering if it's ever gonna get any better where students get their social skills back, 'cause I don't think it's gonna happen too soon. Could [00:22:00] be wrong, but I'm a doctor, what do I know? But when we see that students are really sheltered, what are some observations of hope that you have seen that storytelling has really brought connection back in the place where its absent currently? Well, when I started Morning Circle, which essentially was Facebook livestream where I would tell a folk tale and then give an idea for an art project that tied into the folk tale that I just told, I started Morning Circle very early on when the shutdown first happened here in New York City, and it was a response to a need that I knew my teacher friends had that like, ah, what are we doing? And then also, like all of my friends who were also parents of very small children at the time who were still needing to figure [00:23:00] out work and what that looked like, and they were all going, ah, what are we doing right now? And I had my own kids and everything just felt so weird so I created it in response to that and kind of just being able to provide. What I hoped felt like a respite from the confusion that people were feeling and the sense of just being like a little off kilter. I knew from my own experience as an educator and having my own young kids that like routine is really important for young learners, so I was like, is there a way that story could provide a respite? 'cause I believe that stories provide emotional and mental respite and couple that with the respite of providing a sense of routine and regularity for people. And so I just started live streaming these tellings with the art projects every [00:24:00] morning, almost every morning. There was a couple mornings where I didn't quite make it. But it was just that repeated rhythm of showing up and telling stories. And I think that created connection between myself and those that were listening because I would get responses from people. I was trying to figure out ways to make it more interactive. And then, people would connect to each other through posting the art projects that they did afterwards. So there was some connection there, that I think spoke to that particular moment. It is a way that people can continue to directly communicate to each other. I think when we were isolated, we realized how important stories are and how important it is to share our stories, and to be connected. And, I'm not gonna lie, getting reconnected has been [00:25:00] clunky and I think it's very clunky for a lot of people across many different areas of life. But I think a core of reconnection is our stories. And if you think about it, how do we reconnect when we come back after that long period of isolation? What do we do? We share our stories, right? We share what our experience was. We share how we handled something. We share the stories that we experienced in isolation. And when we share those stories of isolation, we're rebuilding community connection. We're finding where our stories matched up and we're finding where they didn't and how we can have empathy for the places that it didn't and how we can rebuild ourselves. And we do that largely through the sharing of stories. So, I think that storytelling in the aftermath of COVID has really been very [00:26:00] important. But also specifically to the work that I do. 'cause when I tell stories in schools, I'm mostly working with folktales and fairytales and bringing those stories to life and finding ways to really make them very interactive so that kids are also becoming the storyteller with me. And I think that work has, hopefully helped to repair and rebuild some of the social skills that were lost during COVID. I mentioned it earlier in our talk, but just the idea of being able to like, make sustained eye contact, right? How do we have an idea but not jump in over somebody else or just communication skills, getting into the room with the kids, telling a story, giving them time and attention, it rebuilds some of those lost social skills, but also [00:27:00] the experience of listening to and participating in a highly interactive, highly imaginative story also gives a shared arts experience to a group of kids, and that helps to form friendship. It builds shared memory, it builds a common language. So there's several stories that I love telling to young kids, and I'll give you an example from my own parenting, not necessarily a classroom, but, there's this one story that my own kids have loved as they've been little and growing up. And it's about this grandfather bear who wakes up from his long hibernation sleep, and he's so hungry when he wakes up, he has to leave his slumbering place and goes on the search for food. And in this story, he has this repeated refrain that happens over and over and over again in the story. And it's, I'm [00:28:00] so hungry. I'm so hungry, I'm so hungry. So that repeated phrase for my own three kids who have their own little sibling group, right? Mm-hmm. That's their snack time language. They literally bring out grandfather bears I'm hungry refrain, and it's like their own little joke that they will be at the snack cabinet and they'll be like, oh, I'm so hungry. I'm so hungry, I'm so hungry. And it's the same in a classroom when you have a folk tale or a fairytale that can speak to some sort of social emotional learning concept or some sort of like I don't wanna say behavior concepts, but like, you know, here's how we listen, here's a way to show friendship. Here's how you can help a friend. There's all these folk tales that kind of like, there's [00:29:00] teach these lessons and they will often have these repeated refrains when they're performed for young learners. And so those repeated refrains become this common language that the group has. So, there's just so much good stuff in storytelling to rebuild communication skills and rebuild the idea of being together in a group. I love that so much and that actually is gonna answer part of my next question, but I'll interject and say that I have a twin brother and he's my only other human sibling. Of course. I have several dog siblings as well. But as far as my human sibling goes, we shared quite a few number of classes in middle school together. Mm-hmm. And. Like in eighth grade as one class, we shared three out of our six classes together, like the same class period. We've had many years where you shared the same teachers but different hours. But eighth grade was like first period algebra fifth period Spanish. We sat right next to each other, and that was 17 years ago. And even now, we still have a [00:30:00] common language as twins based upon some of the unusual moments that we've witnessed in those middle school classrooms. That common language, those common moments, those common memories, Uhhuh. are what strengthened our relationship at 30 years old. Mm-hmm. And your kids would say the same based upon stories as well. Yeah. So then when you're with the storytelling circle, what are some things that you anticipate and or have seen students physically walk away with, even if they don't realize it right away? Like you already talked about the themes of empathy building and relationship building as a result of stories and your themes and their characters, and even if it doesn't happen overnight, what have you seen your clients and your students come away with? From storytelling or engaging in storytelling? I would say that one thing that I can often see in that moment is that I think is a really [00:31:00] important skill that is harder and harder to for everybody in general actually to work on, but especially students, is listening, deep listening. Mm-hmm. And, oftentimes when I'm telling a story, really when any storyteller is telling a story, right, there's often a moment where you can really see and feel like the lean in of the story, where there's just complete engagement in the story that's being told and like the listeners are really, really engaging in listening and like deeply imaginative listening, because with storytelling, there's usually no image that goes along with the words. And so I think that that is one thing that is [00:32:00] particularly special and unique about storytelling is that it's really activating this like deep imaginative listening for whoever's listening to the story. And so I think as I am telling stories, to students and to audiences, that that is something that is being worked on, is these deep listening skills and that is so important and so beneficial across so many different areas is this ability to be a deep listener, to slow down and listen, and one thing that works its way out of going through a storytelling experience or being in a storytelling experience is confidence in your ideas because you're just listening to the words, you're forming your own picture of what the story is, and so you can take the work that you [00:33:00] do, deeply listening to that story, and really digging into what that story looks like, and you now have confidence in your own ideas or you have the groundwork for being like, you know, I, I have this, I was able to imagine it in my head and like, that's how it looked, right? Yes. So deep listening. I think there's the idea of imaginative confidence and, that's something that our society really needs. We need people who can imagine really deeply, and with great depth and detail, because I think that imagination. Is the beginning of hope. It's the ability to look ahead and think of possibilities. And that's what we need, right? We need to be able to look ahead and think of the possibilities, and that's a skill and that's a muscle that storytelling really [00:34:00] builds. You reminded me of Dr. Jamie Marich who says that more than just atoms, were made of stories. Hmm. And those stories build bridges together as well. So Rachael, this has been a wonderful conversation and to wrap up, I wanted to see if you could share with us a little bit more about how we can engage in the work that you're doing, and if there's anything that I have not asked you about yet today that you would love to share with our audiences as well. Sure. I would love it if people could hop over to my website and check out the work that I do there. It has lots of great images and work samples of what I do, and it can give you ideas for ways that, we could work together to bring folktales and fairytales to life for your community and your learners. So that website is www.rachaelharrington.com. My name is spelled R-A-C-H-A-E-L. And yeah, through that website [00:35:00] you can, find my contact information so you can get in touch with me about coming to visit your school. And then I would also say that if you are a parent or a teacher who is interested in bringing screen free creativity to your kids, I have my podcast called The Fairytale Art Cart, and it is the culmination of my work as both an art teacher and a storyteller, and really grew out of the morning circle that we talked about earlier. So in the podcast, I tell a folktale along the way, we pause the story so that I can give you an illustration prompt so that you get to become the illustrator of the story as you're listening to it. So it's a really fun podcast and I would love it if you could, just take a listen and subscribe and go ahead and leave a review too, 'cause that really helps the show grow as [00:36:00] well. But yeah, I would say check out my website and check out the fairytale art cart. Excellent, which will all be available to us in our show notes as well. Yay. So Rachael, thank you again for joining us today as a space to remind us that stories are avenues for common language, common moments, common universes, common experiences, and storytelling allows to become better communicators and better humans as we bridge our own connections. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts and stay connected with us on the at Classroom Narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook. Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars and education, one conversation at a time.