ABSTRACT
The curriculum of Neighborhood Bridges changes from year to year, and it is essentially set up so that we can explore the basic short narrative genres of storytelling and expose the children to them. We teach through modeling the art of storytelling, animation, coaching, and discussion. We use traditional and untraditional stories to give the students a knowledge of the canonical tales, and throughout the course of an academic year, we animate them to write, read, draw, and produce their own tales and skits. Because our curriculum is large and extensive, I focus on several key sessions in this chapter and the next to demonstrate how we use the tales within the flexible structure that we have developed. Our structure allows for substitution of different tales and exercises. Teaching artists and teachers in our program are given free rein to experiment as they see fit.
