Workshop Film: "Peace Through Storytelling"

One of our original partnering teachers, Natalie Chaput (Woodstock Union High School, VT) asked us to create a virtual lesson to be delivered for students on Martin Luther King Day, 2019. Ms. Chaput is a spanish language teacher, and her classes collaborated with World Story Exchange for several years on the Nicaragua-Vermont Film Exchange.

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, we dug into the WSE archives to create a virtual lesson connecting the core teachings of Dr. King with the core values of World Story Exchange.

For Dr. King, all people deserve the same rights; he railed against the injustices of segregation where Americans of European decent enjoyed more rights than Americans of African decent. King's leadership and power as a storyteller on the national stage convinced many Americans in the late 1950's and early 1960s to join the Civil Rights Movement, whose successes included the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

For World Story Exchange, the stories of people who exhibit the vast cultural diversity of our human family are important to understand. We believe if people understand and appreciate cultural differences, this will lead to empathy, and the prospect of a more peaceful, less fearful, human family.

Here is a link to the 43-minute virtual lesson we created for Woodstock Union High School. We hope this will be useful for teachers interested in lessons on the value of cultural diversity and social tolerance.

Lindsay in her porch-office creating the "Peace Through Storytelling" lesson. Note the microphone and DSLR used for filming the narration.