Challenge and Selection:

Storytelling is a tool that I have been using since 2 years unknowingly to make it easy and simple for  the students to understand the concepts. It has made the task of the teachers easier and efficient.  Usually students find it hard to understand the topics of mathematics such as differentiation and  integration to get a real sense how they work and are being used. Started using story telling when I  used to teach during graduation as part time to school kids. There I realized its true power and how  people connect deeply with a story instead of just telling them a concept and how to use it. Being a  manager, storytelling has proved to be of great weapon in my arsenal which I use regularly with my  clients to make them open up about the problems.

Application:

The story relates to the students who are struggling to understand math concepts like  differentiation, integration, algebra etc. We make them understand by breaking it down into a story  with different characters. Here, in one example, I asked one student to act as a cashier and other as  a depositor in a bank branch. When depositor comes to deposit the amount in the bank and gives  the amount collectively to the cashier, he is acting as integrator. On the other hand, cashier in the  bank when starts counting notes one by one is acting as a differentiator. In short, differentiation  means breaking down the things and integration means adding them up.

Further, in other instance to make it easier in front of the class, I asked one of the students to act as  a differentiator and gave him. While gave other student the power that integration function has.  Then gave them two buckets one filled with water and hole at the bottom and other empty bucket  with no hole. Then asked integrator to put his bucket under the differentiator’s bucket. Now all  realized the meaning of both the terms as water from out from one bucket at different rated is being  differentiated and other bucket collecting water is being integrated.

Insights & Approach:

One of the biggest insight that I’ve got is storytelling helped students to remember and relate not  only short term but also long term memory. It also helped students to start relating and  understanding topics from diverse fields such as chemistry, physics, maths, engineering subjects in  the form of story. It has not only made the tasks simpler and easy to remember but also helped  them to expand their repertoire and mind to apply and learn from different areas, thereby helping  to come up with new ideas and solutions from diverse field. Because it has become easier to relate  things or problems in other areas, fields, industries and take the help from there by circumventing  the innovation already applied somewhere. It has developed a problem solving mind set in everyone  from students to teachers to employees. E.g. After learning about how companies use Pokayoke tool  to make it easier to adhere to strict qualities. One of my student had a small garage just enough to  park his car very carefully. He used to park it very slowly to prevent hitting the front wall and used to  come out several times while parking to close the garage door without hitting car from backside.  After learning about Pokayoke, he applied it into his garage by hanging a ball from the roof such that  when car’s windshield touches the ball, it’s parked accurately. He owes this idea came from the  practise of storytelling which eventually helped him to learn any difficult concept and then apply to  other places.

This course made me see this tool in this way which I have been using quite some time unknowingly  as an asset. Now I help everyone to start with a story to make thing easier to understand and  present. I have a business background which again help me to learn a lot. Thanks for making me  understand it so diligently. Being from a business background, it makes a lot easier to connect with  prospects, clients, employees and other stakeholders to open up and understand their needs. It  helps to uncover unarticulated and emotional needs easily and helps connect a team to work  together for a common cause.

