• ignore parts of the provided information;
• infer connections and information;
• infer motive, intent, significance (even when no supporting informa-
tion is provided); and
• invent new information and detail.
Your friendly NSN will do whatever it needs to do to make the incoming
information make sense as a cohesive story!
Put those extraordinary research findings together and what do
you get?
1. What reaches your conscious mind is always your own self-created,
story-based interpretation of what your sensory organs actually
recorded—altered (distorted) from that original source material by
your NSN to make it make sense to you.
2. When you provide information to your students in story form, you
minimize that automatic distortion in each of their minds. A more
vivid, detailed, engaging, compelling, and accurate image reaches
the conscious mind and memory. In more straightforward terms, use
story and you teach (communicate) more effectively.
We think in story terms because we are hardwired and preprogrammed
to do so. We invent (infer)—as needed—story elements to make the world
around us make sense because that is the way our brains are wired and pro-
grammed to operate.
A Final Thought on the Importance of Story
There is a clear implication to the advances in neural story science over
the past few years. This is something storytellers have long claimed.
However, we have always meant it metaphorically, symbolically. Our
research findings mean that we can state it physically, factually, and
biologically.
Story is literally and physically scripted into our DNA.
DNA scripting directs our developing brains to create an NSN and to
strengthen it into a dominant part of our thinking and interpretation mental
apparatus. DNA scripting preprograms us to make sense, to think, to learn,
and to remember all in specific story terms. DNA scripting creates our predi-
lection for stories and storytelling.
We are story. Story is us. It is woven into the most basic fabric of human
life: our DNA. We are story animals. The value of the science of story is that it
makes clear and specific this inseparable linkage between storytelling and
being human. There can be no doubt, therefore, that story and storytelling
should be central to any and every form of teaching.
The Value of Telling the Story: Storytelling
Science Research
So far, I have laid out the value of presenting material to your SPED
class in story form. However, there are many ways to share a story with your
class. Does oral storytelling hold any substantiated advantages and benefits
for you and for your students?
xiv Foreword
