Story Time

Telling Tales

By Susan Buck Sutton

A few years ago, I added a service-learning component to the summer study abroad course I teach on the anthropology of contemporary Greece. Along with readings, lectures, field trips, and other forms of experiential learning, students now work individually or in pairs with various organizations on the Cycladic island of Paros. These organizations have included the stray animal welfare society, health clinic, public library, island web site, local archaeological service, marine ecology center, traditional dance group, local newspaper, and even the mayor’s office.

When I first asked students to evaluate their service experiences, I expected that I would hear about skills they had gained, the impact they had made, and what they had learned about the anthropology of modern Greece. These results did emerge, but so did something I had not expected. What students mentioned most often and valued most highly was what one student described as “connecting with the local Greeks and hearing their voices and desires.” Or as another student put it, “It was the unintended community engagement that I found to be most rewarding.”

Such remarks, repeated time and again, have brought home to me that the human bond that arises in international service-learning may be just as important as the actual service itself. These bonds cross national and cultural boundaries, thus—at least momentarily—freeing both students and service agencies to transcend divisions that previously kept them apart. Such bonds arise when people work side by side, no matter how menial the task. They also arise when people gradually, carefully tell each other the stories of their lives and communities, a sharing that often occurs as people relax and come to trust each other. These stories are sometimes fictional, folkloric, or mythological; at other times, they are historical, analytical, or descriptive. In previous offerings of my course, I had asked students to interview local residents. The human connections created by the interviews, however, paled when placed next to those that resulted from service-learning, and the stories that students were told in the latter went much deeper.

Why are stories such an important part of the process of connection and transformation that occurs in service-learning? There is an authenticity to them: they are unmediated, direct, and often heartfelt. They also enable the storytellers to reflect on their lives, to recognize and articulate what is important about self, family, and community, and to present this within the framework of their own concepts and understandings. At the same time, they draw listeners out of their own worlds and into others, in ways that are simultaneously cognitive, emotional, and personal. And they demonstrate fundamental respect and reciprocity between listeners and tellers. Stories restructure thinking and cement social relationships in ways that statistical tables—however useful these may be—rarely do.

I have come to see storytelling as an essential element of successful service-learning. Stuffing envelopes at the mayor’s office moves from the mundane to the meaningful as students and co-workers trade stories. Storytelling can sometimes even be the goal of service-learning, particularly when students collaboratively assist local groups in telling their stories to a broader audience, through newspapers, web sites, or videos.

Students sometimes tell me they are worried that they are learning more than they are contributing in their projects, because the people they work with are always telling them stories. My response is that sometimes learning what others want to tell you is a service in and of itself, particularly when people feel that their voices have not been heard before.

At the time this article was written, SUSAN BUCK SUTTON directed the International Programs Office and was Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She was on the IUPUI local committee for the IPSL distinguished partner program.