Programme 400, Matthew Dicks on Storytelling and Teaching (9-5-20)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this 400th episode of Inside Education I am delighted to be joined by the co-presenter of my favourite podcast, Speak-up Storytelling. Matthew Dicks is also an elementary school teacher and the author of Storyworthy: Engage, teach, persuade, and change your life through the power of storytelling. He blogs and shares other resources at his website. Matthew shares a story with listeners to this week's podcast and among the other topics we discuss are:

• Becoming a teacher
• Studying in a community college while working in McDonalds before winning scholarships to university
• Manipulating his dream to fit his reality instead of manipulating his reality to fit his dream
• What he likes and dislikes about teaching
• Teaching children writing like an editor treats a writer (giving them time, choice, audience, purpose)
• The importance of letting a child share their writing and how to respond to the child’s writing
• Providing feedback for students on their writing
• Why he writes
• The kind of stories he tells on stage
• The idea he developed called “homework for life”
• How he uses storytelling in his elementary school teaching
• Improvisational story telling games
• The consequence of storytelling and story-writing being acts “of courage”
• Sharing writing as a celebratory moment
• Having a stage, curtains, lighting and a sound system in his class
• Teaching Shakespeare to fifth grade students
• “Whatever your passion is, bring it to the classroom”
• Albert Cullum Shakespeare in the classroom
• A typical day in his classroom
• Disliking school as a student
• Why he teaches to the students who don’t want to be in class; not assuming that any student wants to be in school on any given day
• How his approach to planning has changed
• He is a problem-solving, big-picture person – not someone who likes to write a unit of work or draft a school plan
• Managing behaviour in the classroom
• Why he dislikes homework: children should read every day and learn to study. He prefers long-term assignments over short-term ones
• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
• Using competence in storytelling to be a better interviewee when you go for a job
• Telling a story