As a child I remember listening to Jim Weiss tell stories via cassette. What a delightful, surreal moment to get to chat with him on the podcast all about the powerful joy of storytelling! Jim shares read aloud tips, valuable insights into why stories are more important now than ever, and even tells a few of his favorites. I hope you love this conversation as much as I did!
Here's an excerpt from my conversation with Jim Weiss: "Also, those stories especially history stories where the person doesn’t make it to the final goal, they get part way. That recording I mentioned a moment ago, Galileo and the Stargazers, covers 19th centuries through the stories of seven science geniuses. The first half is about the great Greek Archimedes, who’s the father of seven different sciences, but the whole second half covers six European scientists all working on the same science challenge over the course of 17 and a half centuries and each one getting a piece of it right moving the thing forward and then handing on what he has done to the next one.
In one case literally handing notes to the next one and saying, “I have taken this as far as I can take it. Now you run with it.” It ends with Galileo and Kepler making the discovery and being able to prove it but not knowing how to explain why it works. The year Galileo dies, Newton is born, the great theoretical thinker, and he is turned on to becoming a scientist having studied Galileo as a boy. He picks up where Galileo leaves off and explains why it works that way and changes all of science in doing it. All of the physical science changes it with that discovery.
One of his contemporaries says, “Sir Newton, you tower over the rest of us. You are such a genius. You tower over us.” Newton famously answers, “If I seem to tower over my contemporaries is because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.” He’s saying, “Yes, I put the maraschino cherry in the whipped cream on top of the sundae but they built the sundae.”
That’s what the great ones teach you ,but what is important is to go back to some of those earlier ones who didn’t get all the way but who knew they did not fail. They said I’ve done something that will ultimately allow somebody to make this discovery. I didn’t fail, I got part way there. I contributed.
That’s an important life lesson. Those lessons are all in the stories. This may be the most important thing I say today, okay? If you want to double the impact of whatever you’re teaching your child, whatever topic/subject it is ask some questions at the end. Say, “Do you think she did the right thing, or what else could he have done.” That is going to turn into the series of the best discussions you’re ever going to have and it makes the story your child’s story. If it’s a story where they’re totally captivated, don’t pop the bubble at the end by sitting there saying, “Now what do we learn from all this?”
Let them go all the way and then move but if it’s a story like that and if it’s one where you’ve reached a point where the character has to make a decision, if I could see somebody’s just locked into the story, it was listening to me, but in some cases, I will actually stop and say, “Wow, what a decision to make.” I’m just curious, honey, if that were you instead of King David, where do you think you might’ve done? Then you talk about it for a minute and then you say, “Wow, that’s so interesting. I don’t think I would’ve thought of that.”
Let’s go back and see what you really did. Then you go back, “Oh, where were we?” Oh yes, we were in the palace. You always want to get back into the scene, you want to say, “Oh yes, we were in the palace.” Then you finish a story and then say, “Okay. What do you think you gave me an idea and King David had a different idea. What do you think?”
What happens is your child starts to look for the life lessons in every story and you don’t have to do that after a while. You don’t even have to discuss it and they’re doubling the impact of whatever they’re studying because they’re talking about it as a life lesson."
