Storytelling in the Classroom - What's so hard?

Storytelling pedagogy is not about performance. It’s about connection, identity and the courage to teach with heart.

When we launched the Telling Your Stories project, it wasn’t just about improving literacy outcomes. It began with listening.

We gathered teacher voice from across Aotearoa and heard a clear, consistent message:

1. “I don’t know many stories.”

2. “I’m nervous to tell stories of communities I’m not part of (and rightly so).”

3. “My Te Reo Māori isn’t strong enough beyond instructional or functional language.”

4. “I don’t have the resources I need.”

5. “I’m not a storyteller. I can read a storybook, but that’s not the same.”

These are honest, vulnerable reflections. And they’re exactly why this work matters.

At Telling Your Stories, we respond to all of these needs by building teacher confidence, connecting schools with local narratives and iwi relationships, developing storytelling resources grounded in place, and reawakening the innate human skill of oral storytelling. Not performance. Not memorisation. But genuine, relational storytelling that sits at the heart of literacy, language and identity. Baskerville (2011) reminds us, storytelling pedagogy fosters deeper teacher–student relationships, encourages empathy, and supports reflective, responsive practice. This work highlights that storytelling is both a way of communicating knowledge and a pedagogical tool for building understanding and whanaungatanga in diverse classrooms.

Storytelling is not just a literacy strategy. It is a deeply human pedagogy. It gives students a way to see themselves in learning. It supports multilingual learners. It strengthens teacher–student relationships. It weaves community, culture and curriculum together.

And it reminds us that every learner, every teacher, and every place has a story worth telling.

Wouldn’t it be grand if this essential skill lived in our learning spaces?  Our little project removes the barriers but there is so much to be done. 

What does story telling look like at your place?