American folktales

YES Abroad student Abigail Taylor partnered with Fulbright ETA Noah Knapp and two of her school friends to give a hybrid (in person/online) presentation at American Corner Skopje about American folktales. There were two goals of the presentation. The first was to show how reading folktales can give unique insight into what a culture is/was like. The audience, comprising local students, and YES Abroad cohort members, accompanied by the ACCESS group from Sveti Nikole, who joined the event online, heard five different folktales, ranging from pre-European settlement America, through American slavery to the frontier and industrialization.

Students sought out the message behind each story, and what the story tells them about the culture/lifestyle/time period it was told and created in. The second goal was for students to learn how to write their own folktale(s). Mr. Knapp, who studied creative writing in university, went through the steps on how folktales are constructed and at each step audience members applied it to their own folktale. In the end, through guided fun brainstorming, the attendees created a folktale that reflected something they loved about where they lived and a message that they wanted future generations to remember.