Cleveland's Ocoee Story Fest features Elizabeth Rose

Elizabeth Rose enthusiastically tells a story about a pony tail using third-grader Emma Evans, 8, as a prop while at Waterville Community Elementary School on Wednesday. Rose was at the school promoting "Ocoee Fest", a storytelling festival presented by the Cleveland Storytellers Guild.

Photo by Dan Henry.

CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Once upon a time, Elizabeth Rose told stories to rafters while she worked as an Ocoee River guide.

Rose, a Roane County middle school principal, will be the featured storyteller Friday for Cleveland's Ocoee Story Fest.

Rose is visiting six schools here and began Wednesday at Waterville Community Elementary, where bleachers filled with children hearing about ponytails and fairy tales.

"Storytelling skills are lifelong skills children are going to use no matter what walk of life they are in, because it has to do with speaking and listening," Rose said. "In story-telling they learn how to communicate and get their ideas across."

Teachers can use story- telling as a tool to meet today's classroom standards, but it also is about entertainment, she said.

"I enjoy the ballads, too. They speak to where I come from," Rose said.

One tale Rose told was about a little girl who wears her ponytail on a different spot on her head each day. Classmates, then teachers, then the principal copy her style. At each step of the story, Rose rearranged third-grade volunteer Emma Evans' long hair. Then the Emma in the story announced she was going to go to school bald.

"I was pretty freaked out," Emma Evans said.

"Me and my Nana at bedtime will tell stories to each other," Emma said after the show.

Dylan Grady, another third-grader, said he likes storytelling "sometimes" and Rose's version of "Hansel and Gretel" was his favorite.

"I liked the rap," he said.

Sylvia Idom with the Storytelling Guild, which sponsors the annual festival, said the art of storytelling remains alive and entertaining.

"Television doesn't actually engage you," she said. "With storytelling all you have are the words. When a storyteller says, 'They lived in a two-story house,' every person in that audience will imagine a two-story house however they want to see it. It might be their grandmother's house. It might be one they pass that's empty these days."

Funding for the event is provided by the Allied Arts Council of the Bradley County Chamber of Commerce, Volunteer Energy Cooperative and the Museum Center at Five Points.

When families take part in storytelling, Idom said, parents and kids get to share ideas with each other.

"If there is blood and gore, you can imagine how much you can handle. You don't have to see more than you want to," she said.