The outlines are in!

After studying the phases of the hero’s journey and analyzing exemplars, tenth graders brainstormed the details of their own stories. In groups of four, each student shares their work to receive initial feedback.

The teacher, crouching, listens to one group and then another, taking notes on the discussion and, on occasion, chiming in with warm feedback or suggestions. Some of the work is inspiring! One young woman intends to tell the story of a Filipina who grows up poor, then loses her parents and is adopted by a wealthy family, and then struggles with how to overcome guilt about her privilege to make a meaningful impact on her former community. A young man is piecing together a parable where a leopard falls in love with a lioness and must transgress strict socio-cultural barriers to achieve personal fulfillment.

Others are less inspiring.

More than one young woman has outlined a story wherein an innocent heroine must save the world from an evil step-dadish/gangster figure. More than one young man has brainstormed the “class clown” story. For example, one about a peer who gets dared at lunch to eat seven hamburgers and does so, then vomits in the bathroom but makes it back to math class in time to take a midterm.

Both these types of stories are disheartening. Of course the teacher wants young women to feel like heroes, but charging a short story’s heroine with saving the entire world? These sorts of just-so, faux-conflict stories, well, they just don’t matter. And speaking of not mattering, the young man’s “class clown” story may get a laugh but it does nothing else: doesn’t encourage a reader to re-consider the world or her place in it, the possibilities of the human spirit, the deep resonant tragi-comedy of human existence, or any of the lofty things a story might do. This class clown story–the embodiment of what David Foster Wallace called the “hip ennui” we must escape to live meaningful lives.

***

“These remind me,” the teacher tells his mentor in their after-school meeting, “of what William Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars.”

Spread before them on a table are the outlines.

“They are not, to put it another way,” says Ms King, “taking Annie Dillard’s advice: write during the day as if that very night your head were going to be chopped off.”

“Okay, so what now? How can I work “does it matter to you?” into the rubric?”

“That is the question,” Ms King admits.

After a brief silence, she picks up the outline of the Filipina adoptee. “Some of these are very good.”

“She has a story to tell!” the new teacher says, “and I think it’s a family story. And this one,” he picks up the leopard outline, “he loved Harrison Bergeron, one of our examplars, and was inspired to create his own world to write about racism in a new way.”

“What were the stories you heard growing up?”

He pauses briefly.

“They were about poor people. My mom’s favorite story was of a second-uncle who had nothing in his miserable life except a lousy coin collection. One day he’s shoveling the snow off his sidewalk and drops dead of a heart attack. Later, an acquaintance discovers him there in the snow with a set of footprints leading up to and over his body and to the door of his apartment and the door’s slightly ajar and guess what?”

“They stole the coin collection,” she says, without hesitation. “Now I know why you like Faulkner.”

The new teacher stares wordlessly at the outlines.

“You’ve asked them to write about their own family stories?” Ms King asks.

“Yes.”

“You’ve got an actual writer coming in next week to give feedback?”

“I do.”

“You’ve had them examine exemplars.”

A nod.

“You’ve got an exhibition scheduled, and they can picture it in their minds?”

Another nod.

“You’re doing well. Perhaps you need to ask some kids again about their own stories.”

“Stories are all we got.”

“There, you and I agree. Stories are all we got.”

“What were your stories growing up, Ms King?”

“Mysteries. Like this: one day, my father’s beloved boyhood dog, Nelson, disappeared. Vanished. And this was a dog afraid of his own shadow. Not a flight risk, is what I’m saying.”

“Gotcha.”

“After Nelson left, my grandparents could never agree on anything. Not what to eat for dinner, not how to properly fold shirts, not how to walk up and down stairs without making a terrible racket. They couldn’t agree on why they ever got married and they wouldn’t have agreed that they had indeed ever gotten married if it weren’t for the license which was pulled out from time to time by one or the other of them to provide ocular proof that they had indeed been united in legal and holy matrimony.”

The new teacher furrows his brow, to show he’s listening.

“My grandmother was considering leaving him when she got pregnant. Precisely two years after Nelson disappeared, in the early morning of July 5th, she gave birth to my dad’s baby brother. And that very afternoon, Nelson waltzed back in through the front door as if he’d never left.”

The students’ outlines sit limply on the table, and the new teacher stares at them.

“And on that morning of July 5th, hours before the lost dog–who’d been gone two long years–returned, they named the baby Nelson?” he asks.

“Yes, they did.”

“And your grandparents remained happily married for many years after that?”

“Yes, they did.”