Preface

Whose bright idea was it to leave me in charge of the academic survival of a hundred and twenty students? “Oh crap, I forgot this was English class, can I go grab my book?” “Are we doing anything important today or can I sleep?” “ Ms.! I just pounded three sodas!” Oh dear God.

I make it sound worse than it is, a gift inherent in teachers. I find myself recounting what happened this past week in an attempt to embellish the reality. Why? For entertainment? To keep me sane? Without the extravagance of exaggeration, the stories I tell would seem plain; and as any teacher will tell you, teaching is anything but plain. I think we teachers embellish to illuminate the real story that goes on in a high school classroom: the constant assessment of self and social structure, the contradictions, and the amazing vigilance of adolescence truth. “Ms., those earrings make you look like a hooker.” As storytellers we must pull forward the most honest moments in the classroom and somehow, without accurate context, give them a voice.

Yet nevertheless, all teachers are storytellers. Get enough of us in a bar and the stories will continue into the parking lot well after last call. But what is it that drives us to tell our hyperbolic classroom lore?

Being a new teacher has its disadvantages; one being everyone gives you advice. “Sponsor your first year.” “Don’t get involved at all, its suicide.” However, there was always one piece of advice that never changed: find the humor in every day. I think it is this sage piece of advice that causes teachers to develop a knack for storytelling. Ever heard this twist on a cliché? It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, then it’s just funny. The key here is to realize that once the action is done and danger is out of the way, things take a very different tone. Stories of near-death encounters suddenly become side-splittingly funny to co-workers. This metamorphosis from horrific to hilarious is well enjoyed at my family’s Christmas party. I believe we are able to laugh at these stories afterward because we realize how awkward the situations were and how even more awkward our responses were. We embellish to make the bad students seem worse, the good students better, and ourselves godly. Somehow, we are able to reminisce, even over events less than an hour old, about how we handled ourselves in the most precarious situations. Then, we are truly able to bask in the truth: we survived. In a profession that is bombarded with criticism from administration, fellow teachers, parents, and most obviously the students, teachers use storytelling as therapy to help deal with the frontlines of high school. We use it to remind ourselves, or convince ourselves, that we are worthy of the job. We are appropriately placed in this world to handle the teenage population on a daily basis, and prepare them for the future they will inherit. It’s a hefty responsibility, but without the embellishments we might never be able to appreciate the unsung glory of our job, or the unsung glory of our students.

So, let me tell you a story…