Today, grandparents and great-grandparents are often isolated from children, causing a separation of ancient partners. Storytelling by elders is a time-honored way of imparting cultural values from one generation to the next. Earlier generations gathered around fires to hear the elders’ stories. Those fires are still waiting to be lit.

This guide delineates the path we’ve trod at Stagebridge to create a volunteer program for senior storytelling in the schools. By explaining what we have done, we aim to stimulate others to set up similar programs that pass on stories and bring together generations.

Bridging the Generation Gap
Our mission is to bring together elders and children through storytelling to increase intergenerational understanding and unity. Seniors today are living longer. For the first time in history, millions of people are becoming both grandparents and great-grandparents. They live far from their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so many children grow up with little contact with those generations. Children need these elders to understand the past and future. By interacting with people of grandparent and great-grandparent generations, they learn about the recent past and can see for themselves that the aging process is part of the natural continuum of life.

Our program, entitled “Senior Volunteer Storytelling in the Schools,” bridges the distance between the generations by bringing together two groups who really benefit each other. The young offer their energy, wonder, and sense of adventure in the modern world. The elders share a deep reservoir of experience. Together they discover wisdom.

Passing on the Elders’ Legacy
Time is the basic framework of history, and the pace of change accelerates with the arrival of the twenty-first century. The elders’ stories are the evidence and artifacts of another mind-set and culture called the twentieth century. When our storytellers recall relationships and stories about their parents and grandparents, they are recalling two world wars, mass migrations, urbanization, exiles, massacres, the founding of new nations, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and trips through the Milky Way. This is the elders’legacy.

Strengthening Our Schools
Stories are an aspect of literature, and they increase the child’s appreciation of and interest in reading. The word history embodies “story.” Storytelling is a literary boost to language arts that triggers creative follow-up activity. Teachers use the storytelling visits as enrichment and link the stories to their regular lessons across the curriculum.

In our experience, the senior storytellers inspire young people to create stories themselves. We see remarkable evidence of this in our creative writing contests: students write stories and essays based on interviews with their own grandparents, often conducted by long-distance phone calls and special visits. In families where the grandparents are dead or inaccessible, the children ask their parents to tell them about their ancestors. (See “Grandparent Tales Writing Contest” in the appendix.) By building a program for senior volunteer storytellers in the schools, we strengthen our schools. The entire society must help educate the children.

Yet in our country, elders’ experience is often under-utilized and their role undervalued. Seniors need the active connection to society to be useful. The schools need community participation.

Our aim with Pass It Forward! is to stimulate you to set up your own program in your area. We hope you may hear yourself say at the next group meeting, “Let’s try storytelling.” Then, how do you become a liaison with schools, create a group of storytellers, and build a program? Pass It Forward! offers some suggestions based on our own experience. We are only a phone call or fax away if questions come up. Together we can figure out how to bring forth the flow of stories between the generations that our children deserve.

Building a National Model
This is only the first edition of Pass It Forward! Once you are traveling the road toward planning your own program for senior volunteer storytellers in the schools, we hope to hear about your journey for the second edition. We want to know who you are, what you are doing, what works for you and what doesn’t. We will compile these experiences into the next edition, making it more useful to new readers. As your feedback comes in, we will be building a national model for the Senior Storytellers in the Schools Program.