--  Stories make the world go around

I spent 26 rewarding years teaching and enjoyed middle and high school (and for one glorious summer, preschool) students! (NCLB and administrivia, not as much.) Stories helped make those hundreds of classes for thousands of students much more fun and rewarding -- and helped students learn more quickly and easily as well.

I knew in kindergarten that I wanted to teach, and my father encouraged that. He warned, though, that "since Daddy is a working man," I would need good grades and scholarships in order to go to college, and I listened. I went to college with a National Merit Scholarship.

---------- (Detour from teaching) ----------

That may sound like a simple career path, but life is never simple. About a year away from graduation at the University of Minnesota, I was given the news that there would be very few teaching jobs available.  The ending of the baby-boom "bulge" meant that schools would be RIFing (Reduction in Force) teachers.

In the 70's, help-wanted ads were divided into "male" and "female" listings, and most liberal arts female graduates ended up working as clerks or secretaries, which I did, working for Prudential for eight years and learning organizational skills from Lorraine Lonquist. When Prudential decided they needed a woman agent, I was offered training in sales (changing corporate language from "men" for agents and "girls" for secretaries).  

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What does that have to do with teaching? Quite a bit -- teaching definitely involves the same sort of persuasive techniques and telling stories. "Is every author your favorite, Miss Garrett?" "Well, not quite, not Hemingway."

When I finally found my way to employment as a teacher back home in St. Louis, my substitute work turned into a full-time position at Downtown Daycare.  The director there sent me to my first storytelling class.  It was pure joy teaching those itty-bitties, but a day care teacher’s pay would not support me for long.

When I was hired to teach junior high, I thought I put aside storytelling; those students were "too old for stories," we thought. Years later, an e-mail from a student, "I remember all those stories you told us," let me know that I only thought I'd abandoned stories. By the time he sent that e-mail, I had consciously incorporated stories into all my classes whenever I could.  Stories helped with learning and with classroom atmosphere.

I had also begun to take stories elsewhere, to festivals, school and scouting events, retirement communities, anywhere people gathered and needed stories. Now that my schedule is more open (how did I find time to teach six classes a day for 180 days a year?) I can take stories and storytelling workshops on the road -- life is good!

Aliens, Allergies, and Stories!

A neighbor once explained my multiple allergies by reasoning that I must be from another planet, and that when the "mother ship" returns for me and takes me to my proper home, I won’t have so many problems.

A storytelling friend figured out why "my people" would have abandoned me in such an inhospitable environment -- to gather stories, of course! It does make sense, even though my mother swears I was born in St. Louis (she had been given castor oil to drink to hurry me along so the doctor could take his family to the Veiled Prophet Parade).

I tried to join the chimpanzees after their show at the St. Louis Zoo (imagine the stories I could have gathered there, if my mother hadn't stopped me).

Salespeople and teachers spend much time on stories, and that first class in storytelling introduced me to the St. Louis Storytelling Festival and, from there, the National Storytelling Festival and classes at ETSU.

On one of the storytelling cruises, Nancy Kavanaugh told of her grandmother explaining the loose skin on her arms as "someplace to keep the stories," and I find I'm even developing that trait. Yes, I was definitely sent here for the stories!