SCHOOL STORY STARTERS

Today during the lesson at school, I throw story starters at the kiddos.  We are working on a new unit, and the book we are going to read often steals details from the author's travels and uses random facts to tell the fictional tale.

The kids have four rectangles in which to write four different story ideas, but the kids are having problems coming up with things to write about. 

Have you ever been to an amusement park?  How about a vacation?  Have you baked cookies with a family member?  Lived someplace different than where you live now?  Attended a sporting event?  Built something?  Seen an unusual animal? 

I go on to explain that their stories can be short tales, descriptive pieces, or even instructions on how to do something.  Blank stares greet me, and I start to wonder why these usually prolific little tale-tellers are having such mental blocks about a relatively simple list of random details.

One kid mentions the time he and his twin tried to chop down a tree with a baseball bat.  It doesn't have to be so dramatic, I explain.

One of the girls mentions fighting with her sister about getting haircuts.  It doesn't have to have conflict, I assure them all, especially violent conflict.

The tales of horror and destruction stream out of them, and I wonder how could such cherubic children produce such harrowing tales of woe. Then I realize that these are the kinds of tales they hear from me on a daily basis:

• The time I tried to throw a kid out the Sunday school window because he wouldn't give me a turn with a toy;
• Careening through the air when my sister and I tied roller skates (with me in them) to a bike (hers) and attempted to hit Mach 1 speeds;
• Watching people at the beach do the Slippery Sand Watusi along the shoreline;
• Cutting my heel almost in half at Craigville Beach;
• Knocking my teeth out and cutting my cheek apart while pretending I was a ballerina;
• Hiding from arch enemies behind racks of infant clothing in Kohls (as if I weren't going to be visible);
• Putting on impromptu disguises to avoid being caught semi-stalking a friend's ex-relatives;
• Crazy travel tales from my many sports-related misadventures...

No wonder the kids think their stories must be intensely dysfunctional. My life is intensely dysfunctional.

Once I reel them back in, they are able to get back on task and brainstorm their way into some fruitful drafts.  This turns into an important lesson, though, but mostly a lesson from me.  The lesson I learn is that I have to try and tell some more normal, sedate, rational, and less humiliating stories to these kids.

Of course, then I'd have to tell them about someone else's life or completely lie my ass off.