Dig Tom’s opening paragraph:

If two people are telling the same story, the one who knows when and how long to pause, when to raise their voice, when to whisper will tell a much better storyI’m just going to add here that the person who can manipulate those small structural cues will not merely tell a better story but succeed in every field for which controlling someone’s emotional response is a priority. And I can’t name any career outside the hard sciences for which it isn’t a priority.. Visual design works the same way. And you get better at it by paying attention to people who are good and then analyzing your own work. Reflection on what you do that works is a key component of design (and just about anything else).

and his closing:

I have no design training other than looking at things and reading stuff on the Internet and a few books.

Storytelling is a skill that lends itself so well to the classroom, regardless of your formal training. You pump a bunch of stories through your digital projector – movies, tv showsYeah, I went there., photos, podcasts, vodcasts, movie posters, print ads, whatever – and, like Tom, reflect like crazy.

Ask your students to articulate a) the stories, b) which one punches them most squarely in the gut, and c) why. Pretty soon you’ve got a robust storytelling toolkit. Pretty soon they’re telling their own stories.

You think your students wouldn’t love this? You think you couldn’t incorporate your omg-fav-xoxo 21^st-century learning tool into this mix? You think you couldn’t find a handful of content standards this fits like a glove?

Storytelling’s gonna happen in my math class and it’s gonna be a blast, if that does anything for your skepticism.