In the relaxed, informal and supportive atmosphere of the story telling session, children have
lots of opportunities to say what they think and feel about the discriminatory issues being presented
to them through the Dolls. The stories build upon each other and encourage children to unlearn
discriminatory attitudes and behaviour while empowering them to stand up for themselves and others.
Persona Dolls and their stories can boost children's confidence, self- esteem, identity formation
and motivation to learn. During these interactive sessions, practitioners have high expectations
of each and every child and support is offered to those experiencing physical or verbal abuse
from other children or adults. If they feel safe, secure and comfortable with adults and their peers,
children are more likely to contribute their ideas, feelings and experiences.

The sessions encourage children to feel good about their own cultural and family backgrounds
while at the same time respecting, valuing and learning about the cultural and family backgrounds
of the rest of the group. Talking about these similarities and differences can help them understand
that being different is not something to tease or harass each other about.

Their active engagement, their bonding and concern for the Doll and the adult’s supportive facilitation encourage them to become decision makers and problem-solvers, a role that helps boost reasoning, reflection, self-esteem and confidence. Given this encouragement, practitioners may be surprised
by what children say: their powers of observation and understanding of the world around them
are often under-estimated.

Many of the stories raise issues of justice and equality and deepen children’s understanding of fairness and unfairness. Through their identification with the Dolls children are helped to see the injustice
of the situations the stories describe and are motivated to think of solutions to the problems
the Dolls 'tell' them about. Emotional involvement in the stories is crucial because it helps to capture
and deepen children’s interest, arouse their curiosity and challenge them intellectually.
As different stories gradually connect up in their heads, so their understanding of quite complex social
issues develops. Their questions and any topics that have captured their interest can be explored
in more detail in other areas of the curriculum particularly citizenship at keystages one and two.

By presenting a range of scenarios and problems for children to assess, explore and solve, the Dolls through the stories they ‘tell’, open up a world of possibilities and encourage children to imagine
what it might be like to live through situations that they have not personally experienced.

Practitioners speak for the Doll and in their role as facilitators guide the session by asking scaffolding questions to capture the children’s interest and encourage them to reflect critically on what they
and their peers have said. Accepting and acknowledging that some children’s ideas about the right
way to act and interact will not match theirs, most practitioners check that they don’t unconsciously
respond more positively to the children who are most like them. They recognise that body language
that children from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds learn may be different from their own.
For example, many Black children are taught that looking at an older person straight in the eye
is disrespectful and impolite whereas many White children are taught to look directly at an adult
when they are spoken to: a sign of frankness and honesty.

Educators use the Dolls and their stories to extend children’s intellectual horizons. The stories enable
them to develop children’s general knowledge, encourage them to share their cultural traditions
and learn about those of their friends, to recognise and challenge stereotypes and enjoy the experience
of being part of a creative and stimulating group activity.

The following Persona Doll story, 'Empathising with Harry' comes from Babette Brown’s book,
Equality in Action: a way forward with Persona Dolls. The storytelling session began with the teacher asking the children if they remembered who was sitting on her lap. The response was immediate.

Having acknowledged their response the teacher passed Harry the Doll around the circle to give
each child an opportunity to greet him individually. From the caring way they hugged and spoke to him
they had obviously identified and bonded. Harry was their friend.

When asked about Harry’s previous visit it was apparent from their replies that the story he had ‘told’ impressed them and that they empathised with him. The question, “Do you want to hear what happened
to Harry at his nursery school on Friday?” was met with affirmative nods.

Harry told me that he was watching four boys building a garage with the bricks. When he tried to join
in the biggest boy shouted at him “You can’t play here. We don’t play with fatties.” And the others yelled, “Go way fatty, go way fatty.”

At this point the teacher maximised the children's input by giving them lots of opportunities to say what Harry was feeling, empathise with him and how they felt listening to his story. By asking questions like, “How do you think that made Harry feel?” and “Have you ever felt like that?” she encouraged them
to talk about their own feelings and experiences. To extend their range of feeling words
she asked them if they had ever been excluded and explained what the word meant.

These were some of their responses:

• My brother always does that to me. He says, ‘No girls!’
• Julie used to be my friend but now she’s best friends with Marie and Alice and they won’t play with me.
• My sister gets really upset when children in the park tease her because she doesn’t walk properly.
• My brother and his friends say I’m too small to play with them.
• The children who have moved into the house next door told me they can’t be friends with me ‘cos they    never play with brown children.
• When my sister’s friend comes to our house, the two of them run and hide away from me.
• That’s not fair.

The teacher agreed that it wasn’t fair to exclude children: to make them feel sad and left out.
She told them that Harry said he was so upset when those boys wouldn’t let him play and called him
names that he burst out crying. He said the boys laughed at him and said he was a cry baby.
A discussion then ensued as to whether it was ok for boys to cry. The teacher drew their attention
back to the story by asking them if it happened again what did they think Harry could do?

The children were eager to help Harry particularly as they considered he had been unfairly treated.
They enjoyed offering him their advice and talking about their own experiences and actions.
The teacher especially supported and picked up on the contributions of the girls who had been victims
and of the boys who had excluded and abused them. She hoped that thinking about how Harry
was feeling and empathising with him might have helped them gain insight into their own behaviour.
She brought the story to an appropriate conclusion by weaving in the children’s contributions,
especially those that most closely matched the goal of the story.

An invitation
We would love to hear about your Persona Doll storytelling experiences
and to read and feature your stories. Please send them to personadoll@tiscali.co.uk
or post them to Persona Doll Training 51 Granville Road London N12 0JH.