Project
Global Stories
Anna Burnley
Global Stories
Burnley: I'm Anna Burnley. I'm an associate professor and ESOL coordinator at Flagler College, and I'm on the Tallahassee, Florida campus. All of my students are studying to become educators. And in my role, I teach pedagogy associated with additional language acquisition. This includes conceptual and cultural ways of being methodology and, of course, linguistics. My research focuses on pre-k-16 pedagogy of globally shared stories. These are things like fairy tales, folktales, myths, sagas, legends, etc..
Children often re-enact these stories, but they change them they become the characters temporarily, which is seen as an almost cathartic release. But it can also be a way of reimagining, perhaps a bad ending from an experience that they had. They can draw on these stories and recreate them, bring them forward in time so that the stories are not outdated and old fashioned, they are truly alive for the children at that time and at that moment, because the stories are global in nature. What we see if we follow the work of Joseph Campbell and the other, great mythologies and Roland Bartlett, etc., is that the stories are culturally coming in from all over the planet, and yet they share similar characteristics similar storylines. And so the children have perhaps different versions depending on where their ancestors came from. But it's one story and they can relate to each other in and through and with these stories. I think that that's part of the beauty is that discovery and the remaking of these stories so that they are more appropriate for the children who are experiencing them and living them at that time. the moment from the institute that is especially alive for me was the hybrid classroom session in which readings and recordings were shared by Willis Jenkins and Matthew Bergner, And through their work, I discovered that there are actually multiple intersections between natural sounds being lost due to climate change and the stories you know… my concern becomes that if the sounds are lost through climate change or through any other significant global change, what happens to these stories? Can they still be understood? Can they still be told? Will they still be remembered? And I want them to be…
Burnley: I'm Anna Burnley. I'm an associate professor and ESOL coordinator at Flagler College, and I'm on the Tallahassee, Florida campus. All of my students are studying to become educators. And in my role, I teach pedagogy associated with additional language acquisition. This includes conceptual and cultural ways of being methodology and, of course, linguistics. My research focuses on pre-k-16 pedagogy of globally shared stories. These are things like fairy tales, folktales, myths, sagas, legends, etc..
Children often re-enact these stories, but they change them they become the characters temporarily, which is seen as an almost cathartic release. But it can also be a way of reimagining, perhaps a bad ending from an experience that they had. They can draw on these stories and recreate them, bring them forward in time so that the stories are not outdated and old fashioned, they are truly alive for the children at that time and at that moment, because the stories are global in nature. What we see if we follow the work of Joseph Campbell and the other, great mythologies and Roland Bartlett, etc., is that the stories are culturally coming in from all over the planet, and yet they share similar characteristics similar storylines. And so the children have perhaps different versions depending on where their ancestors came from. But it's one story and they can relate to each other in and through and with these stories. I think that that's part of the beauty is that discovery and the remaking of these stories so that they are more appropriate for the children who are experiencing them and living them at that time. the moment from the institute that is especially alive for me was the hybrid classroom session in which readings and recordings were shared by Willis Jenkins and Matthew Bergner, And through their work, I discovered that there are actually multiple intersections between natural sounds being lost due to climate change and the stories you know… my concern becomes that if the sounds are lost through climate change or through any other significant global change, what happens to these stories? Can they still be understood? Can they still be told? Will they still be remembered? And I want them to be…
Dr. Anna Burnley discusses global stories, and practices of storytelling and storymaking among children. Referring to the institute’s discussion session with Matthew Burtner and Willis Jenkins on the Coastal Conservatory, Dr. Burnley questions what will happen to storytelling practices as climate change and industrialization transform the kinds of natural sounds that children, and adults alike, experience.
You can find the Coastal Conservatory’s album Soundscapes of Restoration here.
