Wandering

When someone passes by my middle school classroom and hears the words “Mrs. Laaksonen, tell us a story,” it may sound strange coming from the older students I teach. After all, 6th and 7th graders are way too old to be pleading for storytime. Those pleading adolescents, however, don’t want to sit on the circle rug to hear a picture book read-aloud. They want me to tell them one of MY stories. And for me, there are no better days than the ones on which my students are held spellbound by a retelling of the time I was hit by a car or the time I was cast as a bird instead of the role of Cinderella in my Jr. High production. My students often think they’ve “tricked” me into telling them some long-winded tale. I like to think it’s because they love the way I spin a yarn, but I’ve taught middle schoolers for thirty years now–I’m no fool. They want a distraction from any rigorous, taxing schoolwork–a break from “the doing.” And I happily oblige, but THEY are the ones being bamboozled.

I do know what I’m doing after all these years of teaching the same subject at the same grade level. Long before it was fashionable to integrate social emotional learning (SEL) into the teaching of content, I had discovered the power of connecting and sharing my stories with children. It provides a context for the learning, bringing it to life. The stories also demonstrate how our lives are made up of these interesting vignettes that add up to equal our life experience. As a teacher of writing, this idea of a million small stories creating one epic tale is powerful. Most importantly, it helps them know and trust me as their teacher, “a helper” as Mister Rogers so beautifully tagged it years ago.

We are a quarter of the way through the year, so I’ve already shared one of my “greatest hit stories,” the story of getting hit by a car when I was in the 6th grade. I tell this at the beginning of the year during our Childhood Unit in which the essential question is “What are the challenges and triumphs of being a child?” That story captures so much about being a kid–the walking home from school with friends, not looking both ways like I was told, and the triumph of surviving a mistake. For our Generations Unit in 7th grade, I tell them about my Sundays with Grandma; I tell them about how I learned to be dependable and kind from the way she never let me down. There she was every Sunday morning, ready to spend a whole day with me. I never tire of telling those two stories, and they both seem to still resonant strongly with kids.

I look ahead in the school year and relish the thought of my planned wanderings off the path. For instance, I know the kids will be tickled by the story of the crush a boy named Ramondo had on me during my junior high years. That memory comes to the surface when I introduce the story, “The Circuit,” It’s the perfect way to provide background information on the lives of migrant workers which plays a big role in the events of the reading of this excerpt from the novel. I’ll tell them how Ramondo, a boy from a migrant family, had to move to Texas in my freshman year of high school. I’ll reveal I never got the chance to tell him I kinda liked him, too. The kids, if they are anything like those I’ve had in the past, will insist I can find Ramondo. They will remind me anything is possible with the internet. I will do what I always do, and shake my head. I’ll remind them I’m happily married and reassure them that’s how life goes…it’s not a straight line. It meanders, wanders about and ends up just as it should. Much like my teaching.