Folklore and Education

I firmly believe that utilizing folk studies and folklore in the classroom can greatly expand and enrich k-12 education helping make history, writing, and even math more applicable to students’ daily lives and cultures. As a part of my graduate training I studied how to apply my skills to the public school classroom and write folklore and education programs that adhere and enrich state standards. Here are some examples of past and education current projects.

Download the Listen Out Loud! lesson plans here.

Listen Out Loud! - Audio Documentation and Podcasting Program

This is a series of lessons I created that teaches students how to interview one another, edit their audio, and create their own podcasts. Having worked in radio for several years prior to graduate school, I believe radio production offers students an excellent avenue to explore various forms of writing, media skills, even applied math. Inspired by a variety of youth radio programs and folklore and education programs, this lesson plan combines folklore research, writing skills, and audio production and adheres to Kentucky’s state standards for arts and humanities. These lesson plans can be adapted to a variety of uses for after school programs or other similar situations.

Internship Materials/Kentucky Remembers!

During my graduate school summer internship I worked with the Kentucky Remembers! Project, a pilot oral history and human rights youth leadership program under the direction of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. Working in partnership with the Kentucky Folklife Program, Kentucky Oral History Commission, and the Community Scholars Program, Kentucky Remembers! conducted five youth leadership camps across the state. Students researched the history of the Civil Rights movement and human rights struggles in their own communities, conducting oral history interviews with community members.

I served as the staff oral historian for the Bowling Green and Paducah camps where I taught youth how to conduct oral histories, help to make contacts and set up interviews, and handle the audio archiving process. I also helped with the writing of the oral history curriculum for this summer's upcoming camps. I continue to work on the project today. The students research will eventually culminate in a student authored statewide textbook.

You can read an article I wrote about the project published in the Summer 2009 edition of CARTS. To read the article now, go here.