It Began with a Story
Frances Vitali
Well, get ready to tell a story, because you’re going to be 10 minutes late for class, I coach myself. Never mind that the real reason I am late is because of our class as I was picking up DVD copies of our poetry performance from the media center. The truth won’t do, exaggeration, elaboration, fabrication, invention, will be expected, so start weaving, sister. Students will be expecting my story as I enter the room. I realize this is my own invented class ritual, of my own doing, for anyone in our class who is more than 10 minutes, including me. Get jiggy with your story now, I coax myself. I always have one in the wings or can craft a trumped-up-story with anticipatory delight. Stories are content and tools for teaching so opportunities to think on my feet, improvise with ease and engage others in story with the greatest learning ease is good practice. Where did this preoccupation with storytelling come from, I contemplate?
In my heavy nylon maroon uniform I ascended the stairs to the second floor leading to the third grade classroom not skipping all the way to save my breath, all the while thinking what if they don’t behave? I was being sent by my eighth grade teacher at St. Benedict Catholic School to watch the third grade classroom while their teacher, Sr. Eleanor, left to do a short errand. I entered the front of the classroom walking across the polished wooden floor lined on the right with shale blackboards and white chalk. To my left was an audience of quiet eight year olds confined to wooden desks and seats wrought-ironed together. Their eyes attentively and quietly watched me as I approached Sr. Eleanor’s oiled wooden desk. Sr. Eleanor was tall, elegant, sweet and gentle and instructed me to listen to students read the chapter in their history books about colonists and Paul Revere’s Ride and for them to complete the questions at the end of the chapter. I panicked trying to remember this historical event about Paul Revere and hoped to have some time to read ahead in the chapter to refresh my memory. Before her exit, Sister reminded students about their behavior and her expectations of them and the door closed and she was gone. There was a brief stillness in the transition as one saint left and one martyr-to-be remained
Catholic school was an intimidating experience with Franciscan nuns putting the fear of God in you by their mere presence. If God was merciful, I prayed for mercy on my soul because most of my elementary school experience was engulfed in a sea of fear and intimidation balanced with equal proportions of solid quality academic learning. Attending school was a blessing and a curse sort of affair, tumultuous and euphoric tension. I appreciated the Franciscan Sisters who vowed poverty, chastity and obedience as they were entrusted to educating me as handmaids of God in their black and white saintly garb who happened to be human beings with quirky personalities. Sr. Margaret St. Francis, was loving and gentle one minute and I feared her as an animal in a predatorily cornered standoff the next. She was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, affectionately speaking. I loved her yet feared her. During my younger years, I would hear her screams and rantings from my classroom, knowing that one day, I would eventually be in her eighth grade classroom experiencing it first hand. And then months, then years flip ahead like textbook pages on a movie screen and I have a front seat in Sr. Margaret St. Francis’ eighth grade classroom. On a not so fearful day, Sister sent me on a ministration to a third grade classroom to watch the third grade classroom while Sr. Eleanor left to do a short errand.
I knew I would have mutiny on my hands soon if we were just going to read round robin from the history textbook. It is boring enough when Sister Eleanor is doing it. But I did not have any saintly or lay authority that would commandeer such respect. I had to think fast on my small, saddle-shoed feet. A miracle was revealed to me: We would act it out!
I asked the students about the story they were reading. They raised their hands knowingly and cooperatively and deftly we reviewed the historical characters and events and then we began to set the stage, literally. The front of the classroom was Paul Revere’s house and the individual seats the townspeople’s homes. The back of the classroom was the forest for Revere’s riding and hiding. The casting of the characters followed and the momentum was set in motion. Students were stuck on reading from their text for security when in character. I reassured them that they knew the story and to say it in their own words. We reenacted the play as I narrated the events. Paul Revere that day let the colonists know the British were coming in their own dramatic style; and in reenacting the story, they demonstrated what they knew. Although I cannot remember all the details of this day, I do remember students were excited, animated, offered ideas and contributed to their part of history. Two students did not want to act so they were the musicians, becoming drummers for the theme of Paul Revere’s character. When Sr. Eleanor returned, students were back in their seats prepared to answer the questions at the end of the chapter. She asked if they were well behaved. Yes, Sister. Sister Eleanor had no idea of what transpired during that brief time. Something special did happen and I felt happy or was it relief as I descended the stairs to return to my own drama within my eighth grade classroom.
I would forget that experience for a long time only to be nudged awake like a muscle memory from time to time throughout my education and professional career. Since then I have had other mentors to help encourage the role of story in learning. Theater Director Richard Bagg, in college invited me to participate in several theater productions involving poetry and children’s literature. To this day, I still include some of those poems in performances. I thank him being a mentor to me.
In 1992 I began to teach a creative drama class in Gallup, NM. This remains my favorite class to teach in my repertoire because its goal is to help teachers reconnect with their playful child within. As students in this class we are given permission to play, use our imagination and be creative. The intent is if they experience and reconnect with the naturalness of play, they will transfer this to their own classrooms when they are teachers.
From the halls of third grade and beyond, I have naturally come to understand the importance of creative drama, play and story and they are the muscle memory of my teaching.
As I greet my college students in class I announce, You won’t believe what just happened to me on my way to class…….
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Read Linclon Johnson's Reason, PurposeTriumph (Teaching Tolerance, Vol. 37 (2010)