Now On Teacher Voice: StorySlam
“The only purpose of StorySlam is to be there in whatever self you want to be there to tell your story, and to listen to others’ stories.” – Jamie Melton, Senior Fellow and StorySlam Storyteller
StorySlam is an intimate, dynamic event at the Knowles Annual Conference where teachers come together for a night of storytelling modeled after The Moth podcast and live events. Storytellers volunteer to share their true, five-minute personal stories, told without notes to a live audience of listeners. Tom Snarsky, a Kaleidoscope Associate Editor, has emceed the event for the past few years, and wanted to learn more about its history and people’s experiences. During the 2024 Knowles Annual Conference, Tom sat down with the original organizers, the storytellers, and audience members to collect data (Figure 1) and hear their thoughts. This podcast is the compilation of those conversations. Not only does Tom tell the story of StorySlam, but hopefully, he also inspires others to organize similar events in their school communities.
Figure 1
Word cloud of participants’ emotions during StorySlam, collected during the Knowles 2024 Annual Conference.
Music Attribution
“Curious” by Jon Luc Hefferman is licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0
Citation
Snarsky, T. (Producer). (2025, September). StorySlam [Audio podcast episode]. In Teacher Voice. Kaleidoscope. Retrieved from https://knowlesteachers.org/resource/now-on-teacher-voice-storyslam.