Workshops for Religious Educators

Judith teaches two classes, annually, in her home. Both are appropriate for religious educators:
TellingStoriestoChildren.com
Making Stories from Your Life https://storiesalive.com/making-stories-from-your-life/ 
Making Midrash: The Torah and You 
The stories of our Torah resonate throughout our human experience. During our time together, Judith will share a few tales focusing on issues that are as alive in our personal experience as they were for our ancients. Participants will choose a story/issue that speaks to them and through exercises, games, art, and team coaching, work to create original midrash that will speak to both their lives and a larger population.
– 2-3 hours
Binding the Spirit and the Word: A Full Day of Story Exploration
Bringing the word from the Book (any book!) into the heart of those who look to you for inspiration can be a challenge. Join, nationally lauded storyteller, Judith Black for a full day of exploration and expression. During our time together you will learn how to lift a story from a written source, imbue it with the humanity, individuality, and life that the spoken word requires, and adapt for the listeners before you. You will also play with your personal telling style, experimenting with new communication techniques and working to expand your native communication skills.
6 hours
Getting the Story Off the Page
Have you ever been moved by a story in print and retold it to your class exactly as it was written, only to have it fall flat? Stories were traditionally passed on orally. The invention of the printing press required that those stories be translated into the written word. In order to help that story become three dimensional once again, recapturing the nuance and subtlety of a live communication, you must blow the life back into it. This workshop will offer a model and practice at performing that very act.
2 hours
The Techniques of Telling
The wonderful thing about story telling is that it is a folk art rather than a fine art. Far from having to balance on your toes or hit high C, all one has to do is figure out how they tell best. During this workshop we will play with and stretch all of your potential assets for making a story you love come alive for listeners. From dramatic use of your voice, an expressive body, an imagination that creates images in thin air, to dancing fingers, participants will play with techniques. Ultimately, you will emerge with a broader palette of expressive tools to choose from in your storytelling.
3 hours
Improvised Tales
Let’s Party! This is an interactive workshop during which participants stretch their skills at play and use of their imagination. Your sense of the possible will grow as your inhibitions diminish, and you will emerge with wonderful ideas to initiate creative writing projects.
variable time requirement
Authentic Interaction
Authentic interactions is when we, the Rabbis, Ministers, and educators are able to create spontaneous bridges between our listeners, ourselves, and the story. Much more subtle than planned participation AI requires that a teller be open, flexible, and responsive to the environment and listeners in any setting. The tellers natural responses and adjustments in both style and story creates that unique, once in a life time, moment that makes the story, the d’var, the sermon, the absolutely unique moment that it should be. Our time will be spent identifying that range of interactivity and playing with the possibilities that exist in shaping and reshaping our stories/sermons/ around the listeners who come to hear them. 
2-3 hour workshop
From Heart to Heart
Storytelling, an ancient folk art, has recently been claimed as the communication bedrock for everything from Hollywood films, to corporate self definition (branding). It is powerful because it speaks from the heart of the teller to that of the listener, creating a bridge of understanding. In this workshop, participants will explore that bridge. How do we strengthen the investment of listeners? How do we create a resonance that will last beyond words? How do we shape and share stories that can change the world? Come with some tales (folk, fairy, historic, or personal) that you love, and we will work on that essential thing that sets storytelling apart from other communication arts. 
An abridged list of the communities in which Judith has shared this work:
American Federation of Rabbis (Annual Conference)
Cumberland Presbyterian Clergy Retreat (Nashville, TN)
Newton Andover Theological Seminary (Newton, MA)
CAJE (Conference for the Advancement of Jewish Education) The Jung Center, NY NY
NSN (National Storytelling Network) Jonesboro, TN
Adult Education programs at Church’s and Synagogues throughout the country