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S f q p s u 2008-09
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Dale Gilbert Jarvis
Storyteller
St. John’s, Newfoundland
Dale Jarvis’ art resides in the narratives he weaves from
scary ghost stories and traditional Newfoundland tales.
In the classroom, he helps children unlock their hidden
natural ability in the language arts.
For the past three years, Dale has been working as part
of an artist-teacher team to help students at Holy Cross
Elementary perfect their storytelling craft. This year they
added a twist to the project – instead of retelling other
people’s stories, students learned how to tell their own.
The learning process starts with the creation of a
storyboard rich with images and, over the school year,
children learn to tell the stories they’ve drawn from the
heart. They test out the best ways to tell their tales with
their classmates. They master the art of a long pause to
build suspense. They practice vocal inflection to add a
comedic flair.
8 ArtsSmarts
In Dale’s experience, kids who struggle with language arts
excel in storytelling. Children who grapple with lower literacy
levels find speech to be freeing because they aren’t held
back by words that need to be written or read. These kids
shine as they experience what is often their first success
in school.
The process of working in the classroom is one of give and
take. Just as Dale helps cultivate the skills of storytelling and
Photo credit Bruce Carmody
literacy in his young pupils, in turn, these same kids teach
him how to be a more effective teacher and richer storyteller.
As an artist, Dale’s involvement in ArtsSmarts helps to shape
his own craft.
A sustained collaboration between practising artists, classroom teachers and students is
critical to ArtsSmarts’ success. It’s not just what children learn, but how they learn it, that
yields the powerful combination of excellence in learning and innovation.
In addition to their artistic expertise, an artist brings new ways of thinking to the classroom.
Teachers frequently comment that artists work differently than they do. Artists and other
creative professionals involved in ArtsSmarts model the creative process of inquiry,
exploration and reflection, have greater spontaneity and an insistence on ‘doing things right.’
When an artists’ expertise as both a skilled practitioner and thinker is melded with a teachers’
expertise in instructional design, an ideal learning situation emerges.
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