Stories from the Mat, with Jan

Jan Falconer
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What if confidence begins long before a child enters a classroom? Stories from the Mat, with Jan brings together families, educators and experts to explore the ideas, stories and practical tools that help children become confident learners from the very beginning. Hosted by best-selling children's author Jan Falconer, each episode combines thoughtful conversation, practical insight and real-world experience to help parents, grandparents, carers and educators support children with confidence. Because the smallest moments can shape a child's future.

  1. 2d ago

    Episode 24: Matoaka: The Real Story Behind Pocahontas

    Most people know the name Pocahontas. But her story begins with another name: Matoaka. In Episode 24 — Matoaka: The Real Story Behind the Name Pocahontas, Jan takes a different approach to storytelling because the person at the centre of this episode was real. Matoaka was born around 1596. She was also known as Amonute, while Pocahontas was a nickname. She was the daughter of Wahunsenaca, whom the English knew as Chief Powhatan, and she belonged to a world, family, culture and homeland that existed before the English established Jamestown. Jan examines the famous claim that Pocahontas saved Captain John Smith's life with particular care. Smith later said that she did. Another interpretation suggests he misunderstood a ceremony, while the Mattaponi oral history says Matoaka wasn't present. We don't know exactly what happened. The surviving history follows Matoaka through changing relations between the Powhatan peoples and English settlers, her capture by the English in 1613, captivity, conversion to Christianity, marriage to John Rolfe and the birth of their son Thomas. In 1616, Matoaka crossed the Atlantic to England, where she was presented as Lady Rebecca Rolfe. She died at Gravesend the following year, aged only about twenty-one, before she could return home. But stories continued to grow around her. Jan follows one particularly uncomfortable part of that legacy into Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act and its so-called “Pocahontas exception”. She then moves forward again to actor Edward Norton, whose family story of descent from Pocahontas was investigated through documentary records on Finding Your Roots. Throughout the episode, Jan resists filling the gaps in Matoaka's story with imagined thoughts or feelings. What survives comes from accounts made by other people and Indigenous oral history, and those sources sometimes contradict one another. Perhaps after four hundred years of people telling stories about Pocahontas, it's worth remaining curious about Matoaka — the real young woman underneath them. Explore further National Park Service — Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend Explore the surviving written history and Mattaponi oral history, including the places where the accounts differ: https://home.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend BBC News — Edward Norton's Pocahontas ancestry discovery Read about the genealogical research into Edward Norton's family connection to Pocahontas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64158055

  2. Nov 1

    Episode 23 : The Tortoise and the Hare: Are You Running Your Own Race?

    Most of us know the moral attached to The Tortoise and the Hare: slow and steady wins the race. But Jan has been wondering whether slow is really the important word. For her, it's steady. In Episode 23 — The Tortoise and the Hare: Are You Running Your Own Race?, Jan returns to one of Aesop's best-known fables and hears something slightly different in it. There's nothing wrong with the hare being fast. Speed is useful and natural ability is wonderful. The problem is that the hare thinks being fast is enough. The tortoise, meanwhile, keeps moving towards the finishing line. That opens a reflection on preparation, practice and the difference between genuine improvisation and simply winging it. Jan turns to Ella Fitzgerald, whose extraordinary improvisation and scat singing came from a deep knowledge of her craft. Preparation didn't make her rigid. It gave her freedom. Jan also reflects on Tony Hudgell, who suffered terrible injuries as a baby and lost both his legs. At five years old, using prosthetic legs and crutches, Tony set himself the challenge of walking ten kilometres — and completed it step by step. And then there's Jan's own race. This is podcast number 23. She could compare herself with somebody who has made 500 episodes. But why? That's their race. Perhaps the tortoise understood something important. He wasn't trying to become the hare. He knew his pace and where he was going. Jan is careful about one thing: preparation doesn't guarantee recognition, applause or success. Sometimes people prepare beautifully and somebody else gets the prize. But perhaps applause isn't the only measure of accomplishment. Sometimes the satisfaction is being able to say: I did that. I finished it. And I did it properly. So is the tortoise really teaching us how to win? Or might he be showing us how to finish? Explore further Tony Hudgell Foundation — discover more about Tony and his story: https://www.tonyhudgellfoundation.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com Ella Fitzgerald — explore the music and work of the extraordinary Lady Ella: https://www.ellafitzgerald.com/#/

  3. Oct 25

    Episode 22: Finn McCool: When the Landscape Tells a Story

    What happens when human beings look at an extraordinary landscape and wonder how it got there? In Episode 22 — Finn McCool: When the Landscape Tells a Story, Jan travels to Ireland and the Giant's Causeway, where thousands of remarkable stone columns stretch towards the sea. Today, geology gives us an explanation involving volcanic activity, cooling lava and basalt. But storytellers had another answer: a giant built them. Finn McCool — the anglicised name many people grew up hearing for the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhaill — builds a great causeway across the sea to confront the Scottish giant Benandonner. Unfortunately for Finn, when his opponent arrives, he is much bigger than expected. Fortunately, Finn's wife Oonagh has a plan involving a cradle and a very large “baby”. It's a story Jan loves because it's ridiculous, clever and funny. But it also opens a much wider reflection on the stories people find within landscapes. From the Giant's Causeway and a brief visit to Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Jan returns to Aotearoa New Zealand and the kōrero of Maunga Taranaki that she grew up knowing. She is careful not to equate the stories. The kōrero of Taranaki is not a Māori version of Finn McCool. They come from completely different peoples and carry their own whakapapa, meanings and traditions. What interests Jan in placing them beside one another is something recognisably human: people look at landscapes and wonder why they are there, how they were formed and what happened. Then somebody begins to tell a story. And sometimes, once we've heard that story, we never see the landscape in quite the same way again. Explore further Jan has included this Puke Ariki resource as a doorway into the Taranaki kōrero, allowing listeners to explore the story from Taranaki rather than relying only on her telling of the version she grew up with: https://terangiaoaonunui.pukeariki.com/story-collections/taranaki-stories/the-journey-of-mount-taranaki/

  4. Oct 18

    Episode 21: The Selkie: Between the Land and the Sea

    What if the seal looking back at you from the water isn't simply a seal? In Episode 21 — The Selkie: Between the Land and the Sea, Jan travels north to Orkney and down to the shore for a traditional story that belongs to the sea. A man discovers Selkie women dancing on a beach after shedding their seal skins. He steals one of the skins, leaving its owner unable to return to the water. She remains on land, becomes his wife and has children — but she never forgets the sea. Years later, when her hidden skin is discovered, she finally has a way home. There isn't only one Selkie story. These tales have been told and retold in different places for generations, with versions of Selkie traditions found beyond Orkney, elsewhere in Scotland and in related stories in Ireland. Living close to the shore in Orkney, Jan reflects on the landscape in which stories like these have travelled: seals watching from the water, creatures disappearing back beneath the waves and thick seaweed lying along the coastline. She doesn't claim this explains how the Selkie tradition began — we don't know — but it's easy to understand how landscape, animals and imagination might make somebody wonder: what if? Jan also considers echoes she hears in other stories about land, sea and the human imagination, while being careful not to equate Selkies with The Little Mermaid or the Sirens of The Odyssey. And underneath it all is a question she keeps returning to: What did the Selkie want? Different listeners may hear love, belonging, homesickness, possession or freedom. Others may simply hear a wonderful story about people who become seals. Perhaps that's part of the reason these stories continue to travel. Explore further Scottish writer and storyteller Kenny Boyle is someone Jan thoroughly enjoys listening to. His YouTube channel offers another doorway into Scottish folklore and storytelling: https://www.youtube.com/@KennyBoyleOfficial

  5. Oct 11

    Episode 20: Hinemoa and Tūtānekai: The Story That Crossed the Water

    Across Lake Rotorua came music. Hinemoa lived at Ōwhata on the eastern shore. Across the water, on Mokoia Island, lived Tūtānekai. They loved one another, but Hinemoa's family did not consider Tūtānekai a suitable match. They were so determined to prevent Hinemoa crossing the lake that they removed the hoe, the paddles, from the waka. Hinemoa found another way. In Episode 20 — Hinemoa and Tūtānekai: The Story That Crossed the Water, Jan tells the story of Hinemoa tying together six empty gourds to help keep herself afloat before swimming through the darkness towards Mokoia Island and the sound of Tūtānekai's music. But the story doesn't end at the shores of Lake Rotorua. Jan remembers how it travelled into her own family. Her brother Richard, a strong swimmer who knew what Hinemoa had done, decided as a teenager to swim Lake Rotorua himself. Years later, the family is still telling that story. Then there's cousin Vinnie — talented musician, definitely not a gangster — who encountered the story during a family trip to Rotorua, found a nose flute and decided he was Tūtānekai. Jan also carefully distinguishes that family memory from the tradition surrounding Tūtānekai. The instrument associated with him is a Māori flute, and one treasured kōauau connected with Tūtānekai is Te Murirangaranga. Accounts differ in some details about the flute and even who produced the music Hinemoa heard. It's a story about Hinemoa and Tūtānekai — but also about what can happen when stories are told again and again, travelling through generations and sometimes becoming woven into our own family memories.

  6. Oct 4

    Episode 19: Earth Mother and Sky Father: The World of Light — Papatūānuku and Ranginui: Te Ao Mārama

    In the beginning, there was Te Kore — the void. Then Te Pō — the darkness. And from that darkness came Ranginui, Sky Father, and Papatūānuku, Mother Earth. In Earth Mother and Sky Father: The World of Light — Papatūānuku and Ranginui: Te Ao Mārama, Jan tells a Māori creation story she has known for many years. Ranginui and Papatūānuku are locked together in a close embrace, with their children living in darkness between them. After others try unsuccessfully to separate them, Tāne, god of the forests and trees, pushes Sky Father upwards from Mother Earth and creates the space for Te Ao Mārama — the world of light. Jan reflects on what she hears in the story now: not only earth, sky and the forests of Aotearoa, but a family facing different opinions, a difficult decision and its consequences. The children gain light, space and a world in which to grow, while their parents lose one another. She also remembers standing beneath Tāne Mahuta, the great kauri tree in Waipoua Forest, in the early 1980s — an experience whose majesty and silent power has stayed with her. The episode considers the enormous question human beings across cultures have explored in different ways: how did all this begin? Jan also distinguishes these creation stories from the scientific account of the Big Bang while reflecting on the curiosity behind questions about beginnings. And she returns to something very simple: the way an old story can make us look again at a tree, the earth beneath our feet and the sky above us. Explore further Te Ao Māori — New Zealand Ministry for the Environment Explore one telling of the Māori creation story and discover more about Ranginui, Papatūānuku and their children: https://environment.govt.nz/te-ao-maori/te-timatanga-o-te-ao-maori/ The OER Project — Origin Stories Explore origin stories from different cultures around the world: https://www.oerproject.com/topics/origin-stories?WT.mc_id=00_00_2026_CONV_CLM_TOP_ROWT2_CK-topics_AK-originstories_OER-SEM_&WT.tsrc=OERSEM&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23936471894&gbraid=0AAAAACd_5E3n0l1D5eMQafRoxtb_fmEEh&gclid=Cj0KCQjw4orUBhCjARIsAIbF3qzIExZY4BNBnBzHHfbr_n16jF7OiNrRIH_IpTC_ORCqx9tVXU28eJwaAtbAEALw_wcB

  7. Sep 27

    Episode 18: Why Stories Stay With Us

    Why do some stories survive for hundreds — even thousands — of years? Series 3 of Stories from the Mat with Jan begins with The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a story so familiar that even people who haven't read Aesop's Fables may know exactly what's coming. But how did that story travel all the way to us? And why are we still telling it? Jan explores the extraordinary way stories have carried memories, history, culture and identity from one generation to another. She considers why stories from very different cultures can sometimes contain familiar patterns, from Hinemoa and Tūtānekai in Aotearoa to Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story and even Lady and the Tramp. This episode also opens the door to the journey ahead in Series 3: an adventure through traditional stories, legends and storytelling from around the world. Because sometimes learning begins with one very simple question: “Have you ever heard the story about...?”

  8. Sep 20

    Episode 17: The Things We Come To Appreciate

    When I began these reflections, I thought I was simply responding to conversations with four wonderful children's authors. What I didn't expect was how much they would change the way I saw the world. Linda Murphy encouraged me to think differently about what "enough" really means. Laura Strachan reminded me that children don't always need new stories – sometimes they simply need familiar ones read with love. Julie Ball showed me that wonder begins with noticing, and Ruth Shevlin helped me recognise that creativity often lives quietly in the ordinary things we do every day. This final reflection isn't a summary of the series. It's a chance to pause, look back and consider the things we've come to appreciate along the way. I hope these conversations have encouraged you to notice the confidence, wonder and creativity already present in your own family life. Thank you for joining me on the mat this series. And as Julie would say... here's to a little more joyment. Find out more about:- Linda- https://www.lindamurphybooks.com Laura- https://laurastrachanbooks.com Julie- https://www.julieballauthor.com Ruth- https://rdschildrensbooks.com 🌿 Join the Club: https://www.janfalconerauthor.com/join-the-club

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What if confidence begins long before a child enters a classroom? Stories from the Mat, with Jan brings together families, educators and experts to explore the ideas, stories and practical tools that help children become confident learners from the very beginning. Hosted by best-selling children's author Jan Falconer, each episode combines thoughtful conversation, practical insight and real-world experience to help parents, grandparents, carers and educators support children with confidence. Because the smallest moments can shape a child's future.

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