Application of the information from the folk stories includes changing, demonstrating, modifying, preparing, producing, and using the material covered. Students should be able to apply concepts and principles to new situations, apply the stories to practical situations, construct models to solve personal or societal problems and demonstrate a use of the stories.
The application of the stories can be demonstrated in several ways. Students will be able to modify what they have learned in other areas to help other students discover how to learn.
A classroom activity which will help students apply another level of the power of the oral tradition is a way of being successful in school by learning facts. Students can prepare educational or informational raps that would stimulate other students. These educational raps can help students demonstrate how to learn history, biology, math, a foreign language, or they can teach them or give them information on more contemporary issues like the use of drugs.
The students who worked with me composed a rap about the use and abuse of marijuana, the last line of the rap was:
“don’ choke, don’ smoke, everybody’s smokin’ chokin’ on dope.”
Students who are artistic and able to use puppetry can do storytelling for elementary school students. These stories that are disseminated to the elementary schools should be the stories that the students collected, read, and the raps they composed. This visual method, the puppetry couples easily with the oral tradition. However, before the student’s use the puppets for the younger students, they should evaluate the use and the purpose of the stories they have collected to see which would be most appropriate.
Another method of getting students interested and working hard on storytelling is by incorporating stories told by Black comedians like Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Eddie Murphy. Many of the students already listen to these comedians, but don’t realize that they (the comedians) like the other storytellers used in this unit are preserving the Black oral tradition of storytelling.
These comedians use a similar style of many black urban folklorists. They combine humor and enliven the stories with the realism of everyday events and are able to tell stories that entertain, explain, or teach.