Telling Stories

I’ve heard it repeated quite a bit that we typically remember about 5% of what we hear, which if true really brings home the futility of lecturing to kids.

Then I think back to my first year of teaching. Seventh grade English.

It was after Thanksgiving, because it was after the point in the year when they tell first year teachers that it’s okay to smile. One of my kids was griping about the weight of his textbooks. The giant lit book, the mighty math tome, the science stack, the gargantuan grammar stone. With hunched shoulders and a lifetime of back pain ahead of him, he groaned, “They should outlaw big heavy books.”

I shook my head and told him that big heavy books can be pretty useful. I took his lit book and hefted it as if testing the balance of a sword, feeling its weight in my hand. The class stared at me skeptically and I smiled as I stared at the book. “Let me tell you a story,” I said…

When I was about your age we lived in Italy in a big old house with marble stairs. One night I heard commotion downstairs and crept to the top of the staircase to see what was up. I could hear my parents yelling and a bunch of banging around. Then my mom, hollered up the stairs, ‘We’re being robbed!’

I had no idea what to do, but it wasn’t long before my parents laughed and things settled down. Here’s what happened.

My dad had gone down to get a snack and he saw a man in the house. The man had my mom’s purse or maybe the computer or something and he stared at my dad and my dad stared back at him. Then, my dad reached for the nearest object he could find… a cookbook… and he chunked it at the robber.

At this point I threw the lit book at the wall as hard as I could. It hit with a crack that woke up all the kids who weren’t paying attention.

Then he grabbed another and another and he and my mom threw cookbooks and dictionaries at him until he ran out of the house.

The kids loved the story. Maybe it’s something about the appeal to middle school kids of objects that shouldn’t be thrown flying through the air, but it made them laugh, and the books, now that their potential as weapons had been realized, didn’t seem quite so heavy.

Years later, I taught at a high school in the same district. I had many of those same kids in my 11th grade English class. The first day of school, after reviewing the syllabus and talking about expectations, I asked if there were any questions.

A hand went up.

“Yes,” I asked.

The girl grinned. “Mr. B, will you tell us the story about how your parents chased the robber out of your house by throwing books at him.”

The kids who had been in that class perked up and nodded assent. One boy asked, “And will you throw a book?”

Fortunately, I was to find out that that wasn’t all they learned back in 7th grade, but I realized then that when we tell stories, the people we’re talking to will remember a whole lot more than 5% of what we say.

James Brush

James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.

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