 Shelley Gotterer, experienced teacher and
delightful storyteller. Her enthusiasm and skill
illustrate the importance of storytelling as a foundation for literacy. For
over 20 years, she was on the Artist Roster for Arts in Education,
Tennessee Arts Commission. The locations of her residencies and workshops
include Bradley Academy, An Integrated Arts School, in Murfreesboro, TN;
Westminster Preschool, Nashville, TN; Eakin Elementary School, Nashville,
TN; Lockeland Elementary Design Center, Nashville, TN; Harpeth Valley
Elementary, Nashville, TN. She has presented for conferences such as
Mother Infant Outreach Workers, MIHOW; National Association for the Education
of Young Children, NAEYC; and the YMCA staff training.
Ms. Gotterer tells stories with students, guides their own storytelling abilities, and collaborates with educators and librarians on ways to use storytelling to reach their objectives. Ms. Gotterer has developed storytelling curriculum to strengthen overall language arts curriculum. As a teaching artist, she designs workshops to train and encourage educators and librarians to tell folktales. In addition, she provides storytelling resources, often donating professional books to schools. She also creates workshops for parents, grandparents, and friends of young children to train adults in using storytelling, the key to oral language development. | "Telling stories with children has been a joy
of life." For more than 28 years, I
have worked with children from preschool through elementary school
telling folk stories, collaborating with educators, and leading storytelling
workshops. Students respond with delight and are eager to act out stories, to retell, to draw, to discuss, to write about the stories. Teachers are pleased that students are so motivated to listen, to speak, and to cooperate. Classroom storytelling is, in fact, a powerful tool for teachers to fulfill academic standards. Teaching through the arts is highly effective and storytelling is especially valuable to educators. Stories bind us together in families, in schools, in communities, in life.  For ten years, Ms. Gotterer was an Enrichment Storytelling Teacher at The Westminster School of Nashville, now Currey Ingram Academy, a school for children with learning differences such as dyslexia. She also designed a storytelling elective for St. Bernard Academy, grades K - 8, and for Napier Elementary kindergarten classes. Ms. Gotterer received her Master’s Degree in Interpretation from the School of Speech at Northwestern University. She served as an adjunct faculty member for Peabody College, Vanderbilt University teaching children’s literature and drama. In addition, she for 18 years she had a weekly program, "World Tales," broadcast by the Nashville Talking Library, a free audio service of the Nashville Public Library. |