“Once upon a time, there was a Superhero. But then there was a belly full of poison [in the Superhero] and that has powers to protect it, and it also has killing and snow and lava powers. But then ALL the powers—every power in the whole earth—blasted everything away and there was ONLY that Superhero.”
—From “Blow Everything Away” by Fitz
(second week of school)

Moment to moment, week to week, and year to year—teachers make choices. Small choices, big choices, important choices. Choice is our challenge and our privilege—maybe even our superpower. Among the most consequential choices we make: how will we spend the finite hours we have with the children? How will we focus our limited energy and attention?

In my 37-year teaching life, I’ve chosen to give time, energy and attention to children’s storytelling and story acting. I began as a disciple of Vivian Paley, whose compelling books about story work and classroom life completely captivated my new-teacher imagination. Paley showed us classrooms where children regularly dictated stories to the teacher, who wrote them down and brought them back to the group to act together as informal plays, with the teacher acting as narrator and the storyteller choosing which role he would play, and acting as director. I loved Paley’s idea that story work grows each child’s agency and voice; grows the reciprocity between teacher and child; and also grows community between the children as they “learn each other” through stories. And practically speaking, as a young teacher making the case for my curriculum to parents, supervisors, and licensors, I liked how legitimate it seemed to frame “doing stories” as literacy practice—a gateway to the sanctioned “real school” activities of reading and writing.

Over the years, as I’ve continued my study of Vivian Paley, and as my own way of doing stories with children has evolved, I’ve come to understand the value of story work in a broader and deeper way. There are higher allegiances than literacy, and there is more to storywork than teaching techniques like taking dictation and narrating story-plays. It seems to me now that Vivian Paley tuned her heart and mind to stories as a way to get closer to children’s hearts and minds, and I want that, too—to receive children’s stories with an open heart; to study their stories for clues to who they are; to present their stories in a way that allows the community to see and appreciate each storyteller; and to help children as storytellers to connect more deeply and fully with one another. For me, story work has become a reliable way to show up with integrity for each child—me in my full humanity witnessing their full humanity—animated by curiosity, rooted in trust, grounded in respect.

And when I do show up that way, I’ve seen how stories can work a kind of magic on both the storyteller and on the circle of teachers, children, and families who receive the stories. Here, I’d like to share how that magic worked for one memorable storyteller named Fitz.*

Fitz landed with us as a 4-year-old, after an abrupt break with the early childhood program where he’d spent his toddler and young preschool years. His parents were honest: that program had reached the end of their capacity to navigate the intensity of emotion and conflict that came with Fitz’s fiery and high-energy personality. On an intensity scale of one to ten, his parents said, let’s call him an 11. Full of feelings; overflowing with big questions; quick to act. Fiercely opinionated about HOW THINGS SHOULD BE, and exceptionally invested in control. Deeply loving, and deeply territorial.

So we were prepared. And sure enough, life with Fitz did involve a lot of careful navigating—navigating the tension between his strong preferences and other people’s preferences; between his agenda and our routines; between his wishes and our community rules and agreements. We learned a lot from Fitz about how to hold our boundaries without insulting his autonomy or questioning his good intentions. And, as we worked hard to create a safe and welcoming place for him, Fitz worked even harder: he studied this place with laser focus, and whole-heartedly threw himself into becoming a citizen of his new community.

In the course of all that shared effort, we also discovered something about story work. We found that storytelling can offer an oasis—a restorative landing place—in the midst of social challenge. For Fitz and for me, storytelling became a ritual for re-centering and an exercise in love.

Certainly, there is some structure and challenge in the storytelling process; even an oasis has its demands. The storyteller has to wait his turn and pace his storytelling to allow my scribbling pen to keep up. He has to work inside the limits of one journal page. I’ll want his story to have a plot—something has to HAPPEN—and I’ll expect a title when he’s done. I’ll ask him to keep a lid on the potty talk; and I’ll have questions if his story seems to reflect a harmful stereotype or treat a real person in our community unfairly. But within that structure, there is tremendous freedom.

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And the freedom inside storytelling is different than the freedom Fitz often leaned on to ease the challenge in his days—the option to play somewhere on his own, in a space no other kids were using, where he could have the first, middle and final word on what happened.  That was the freedom to choose solitude—but story freedom is a shared freedom, a “together” experience. First and foremost, the togetherness of dedicated time with me, his story teacher. And secondly, the togetherness of creating something that he knew would be shared with all the people in his community—the other kids who would hear his story being told and act his story later, and all the families who would read the story when I emailed it to them at the end of the day.

So what did Fitz do in that oasis, with that freedom, in my company?

For one, he gave himself in fantasy something he could rarely have in real life—absolute control. Consider the “superbad monster” …

“… who can turn his hands into a giant circular saw, and he uses the circular saw to cut down the trees because he did not want anything in his land. And he uses them to cut people because he doesn’t want people in his land either.”

My heart ached a bit when I heard about that monster, and though I had no interest in flexing my teacherly moralizing muscles, I genuinely wondered if Fitz could see what I saw—the steep cost this character was paying for command of “his land.” I said, “Wow. You know what feeling I get in my heart when I think about this character?” Fitz, accustomed to this sort of honest musing from me, replied with relaxed curiosity: “What?” “Lonely,” I said. Fitz nodded slowly and seriously, thought for a moment, and then doubled down on his original premise:

“And he can also turn his hand into big rocks and he used them to put lots of the rocks on water, because he did not want anything, even water, in his land. And then a good guy comes and then he tried to cheer the bad guy up but the bad guy used another rock to squish that person. The end.”

I relent: “OK, I get it. Seems like that superbad monster was very clear about what he needed. He really liked being the boss of his land.” Fitz looked into my eyes and said with quiet satisfaction, “Yeah.” Mission accomplished—and faithfully witnessed.

Likewise, Fitz used stories to satisfy his longing for perfect safety. His stories were often catalogues of threats successfully met with overwhelming force. He was a connoisseur of creative self-defense; his protagonists fought back with a whole kaleidoscope of powers—blue water power and red fire power; green growing power and lethal yellow lemon power; brown tape power that immobilized his enemies; and suck power that extracted any lingering menace from their bodies. But most of all, Fitz prized multi-dimensional powers that could never be matched or depleted: everything power; never-die power; and rainbow power that “means they got any kind of powers they can have.”

And Fitz also had another, more counter-intuitive way of using stories to assuage his worries. In some of his stories, the whole world was totally and irrevocably destroyed, and when he chose the part he would act in those stories, he cast himself as the agent of destruction. He was the “gust of wind that blowed everything away!” The “fire that burned EVERYTHING down and melts everything!” The “red fire that breaks everything!” The Superhero who used “every power in the whole earth” to blast everything away!

Here’s what I heard Fitz saying in the apocalyptic tales he told with such gusto: “Donna, you know how my body is always humming with the worry that something I do not like is about to happen? Well, in my story, I get to say ‘If bad things are gonna happen, let’s go big or go home. Let’s just get it over with and wreck it all!’” For a person so deeply and vulnerably attached to his family, his dog, his belongings, and more and more, his friends and teachers and school—there was something paradoxically freeing and relieving about imagining himself just blowing it all up. Picture a Buddhist monk practicing non-attachment with Marvel-comic pyrotechnics instead of meditation. I thought it was brilliant.

And then there were the satisfying stories animated by Fitz’s almost romantic fantasy of monogamous friendship. If we had asked Fitz to describe “a perfect day at school,” I’m quite certain he would have envisioned an uninterrupted morning hunkered down with his best-beloved Sol, two bad guys with exclusive possession of the play house, the coveted rainbow ball, the sparkliest hula hoop, and piles of scarves in the colors of their favorite powers. Of course, in real life school, Fitz knew he was expected to live within our agreement to “find a way for all to play,” and he grappled gamely—if not always cheerfully—with the challenge of making space in his games for anyone who wanted to join. But in stories, Fitz relished the freedom to lavish all of his love and loyalty on ONE best friend. His protagonists would stop at nothing to eliminate interlopers:

“Once upon a time, there was Fitz and Sol. And then Fitz and Sol… are bad guy kings and they kill everything in the forest, even the trees. And then they build a house in the forest and then they go to a city and they smash down all the cars and the roads and everyone’s house. And then they kill everyone in the city and everyone in the forest and then they make a sign, ‘No people allowed except Fitz the Bad Guy King and Sol the Bad Guy King.’ The end.”

And there was something else Fitz was doing with stories like that one—stories of what he might call “meanness” and that adults might call “violence.” I think those stories were a query, a brave and tender question. Fitz was asking me—both as his story teacher, and as a proxy for our school community as a whole—about whether he was seen, accepted, and trusted.

He couched this query in stories of extreme misdeed and shocking badness—bad guys who “ate their friends” and went “kill hunting” in the woods and “wrecked all the toys they found” and “crushed stores because they had powers that can make them ginormous and so strong.” And the question posed in these stories was, “When I tell unapologetic and gleeful stories of badness, does it make you worry that I am bad? Do you know the difference between the bad guys I create and the real person I am?”

I felt deeply the privilege and responsibility to meet this question with honesty and love—to show as much trust in Fitz as he was showing in me. So I scribed those stories with all the unwavering receptivity I could muster, and with unequivocal clarity about the difference between real life and pretend. I leaned in close; I focused; I mirrored back his words with animation but without concern. Sometimes I’d get a little confused about an action sequence or plot twist, and ask for clarification—“Hold on, this is important—let me make sure I’m getting it.” In especially outrageous moments, I might raise my eyebrows or smile wryly; sometimes I’d even chuckle—but laughing with, not laughing at. Other times, my eyes got wide, or I gasped in suspense, or sighed with relief. And—as you’ve already heard—sometimes I’d notice my heart breaking a little, and I might ask more about how a character was feeling or what they might need. What I would not allow myself were censorship, judgment, and moralizing. Curiosity, authentic emotion, and the occasional editorial challenge—those were all ways I communicated this answer to Fitz’s question—“I trust you; I respect and enjoy your work; and I’m certainly not one bit worried about your basic goodness.”

And truthfully, I mostly found it easy to answer Fitz’s query this way. In part because I DID “see” Fitz and his huge heart and his deep commitment to goodness; and in part because his creative work—his stories—were such clever, unaffected and moving expressions of his rich inner life. I found them delightful. Looking back, I suspect that I received his stories less as a teacher working with a student, and more as one person sharing a rich aesthetic and emotional experience with another.

In any case, as the months passed, something strong and nourishing grew inside our exchange around those dark stories; there was palpable trust, warmth and appreciation for each other’s individuality. And, as his stories were witnessed and revisited and acted by his friends, that same warmth and trust expanded outward into Fitz’s relationship with the group as a whole. As all those constricted and defensive stories moved through Fitz and into the container of his community, space seemed to open up inside him for other possibilities.

Stories of isolation made way for stories of teamwork. In one story, a character falls asleep after a gruesome battle with a monster, and then “dreams for someone to be his friend.” In another story, the monster begins by protecting his territory in the fierce usual way:

“Once upon a time, there was a monster – RRRR- and he lived in his castle. And then a good guy comes. And then the monster uses his super pushing power to push the good guy off his castle.”

But look what happens next!

“And then the good guy comes back—because he wants to be on the team—and [this time] the monster says ‘Yes!’”

And the teams in these newer stories often included not just ONE ally, but a whole crew of collaborators. Not just Sol, the best friend Bad Guy King; but also Unicorn Fiona and Mermaid Zinnia and King Elliot and Queen Vander and Princess Raina and Fairy Ona. In one story, a whole passel of unicorn cousins are a team; at the end of the story, they sleep together on “rainbow pillows” in one “ginormous bed.”

Fitz’s stories still had tense moments, but conflicts were often resolved quickly, leaving time and space for simple pleasures and cozy routines of care. Characters ate snack, took naps, went to the doctor to get band-aids, and hung out with their Moms. There was space for beauty—jeweled crowns and rainbow shoes and sparkle powers. And there was sweetness to share—birthday cakes, candy snacks, and strawberry ice cream for breakfast—all without cavities.

And though many of Fitz’s characters still called themselves “bad guys,” they often seemed to be using their powers for good. The “castle person” with “brave powers” got himself free without hurting anyone else. The Moms and babies “use all their powers to make the golden statue shinier, forever!” Two magic flowers make the trumpet “a little bit quieter” so they won’t bother Puff the Magic Dragon. When a “bad poke” and a “bad windmill” go on the attack, they must be stopped by spikes; but when they “come back to life” they aren’t killed again, instead, the “Crystal Person turned them to good.”

In the midst of this evolution came our annual Story Festival—the late spring celebration for which each child selects one story from their storytelling year to act for the whole community. Each storyteller chooses the cast who will help them present the story—a mix of friends, siblings and parents. Vander, one of the younger children, chose a story set in a construction site, where a “bad guy” destroys the building because he didn’t want ANYTHING built there. No one was surprised that Vander offered that bad guy role to Fitz, or that Fitz happily agreed to take the part; after all, Fitz had been casting himself in parts just like that all year long. Vander cast his Dad as the tall building, and cast himself and his friends as various construction vehicles. We practiced the story off and on over several days, and at first, Fitz performed his destructive duties with his usual dramatic zeal. But as the practices continued, Fitz got quieter and quieter. And then one morning, he refused to practice altogether. I was surprised—everyone understood the importance of their commitment to acting in their friends’ Story Festival stories, and as opinionated as Fitz could be, he had never balked at something he considered a serious Children First duty.

As I considered how to respond, I came to a realization—Fitz had changed. Vander hadn’t seen it; I hadn’t seen it; and I think Fitz had not quite seen it either—but Fitz was no longer the kid who identified himself with the solitary and powerful bad guy. Now he identified as a teammate, a helper and a friend. He would rather be just another mundane and ordinary construction vehicle—yep, even a garbage truck—than the lonely star of the show. So, Vander recruited a parent to sub in as his bad guy and Fitz cheerfully parked himself at the construction site with the rest of the fleet.

Fitz’s friend Zinnia said it best. One morning shortly before graduation, as part of a conversation that had nothing to do with Fitz, she heard another kid refer to the “F word.” She asked, “What’s the F word?” The other child answered gravely, “It’s a BAD word. DON’T say it!” Zinnia said, “Well, I know a word that starts with F and it’s definitely not a bad word. Fitz is a LOVE word!”

And of course, whatever our names, in my world view, we are ALL “love words.” Love is the essence of each and every one of us imperfect humans. And we all know what it’s like to get so caught up in our worries and our opinions, our wants and our weighty responsibilities, that we become separated from that essence. From this year of stories with Fitz, I learned that stories can carry us back to that essence. Creative work—especially creative work made and witnessed inside supportive community—can soothe even the fiercest fire-breathing dragons that guard the gates to our true and tender hearts.

*not his real name