Brett Morgan

Learning to Tell a Story

In second grade, I learned how to tell a story. It all started during the first week of

school. I took my seat right next to my best friend RJ and prepared myself for whatever

Mrs. Sheridan had in store for us. Over the past few days, I had grown accustomed to what

she would be teaching us over the course of the year. She talked about the standard stuff –

math, grammar, spelling, etc. It would all come to be valuable in my life, but none of these

things were quite as valuable as the simplest aspect of the class. On the first day, she had

asked us to write a journal entry describing our summer and explained that we would be

doing this every Monday throughout the year (describing our weekends instead of the

summer). At the time, I had whispered to RJ, “This is gonna be so annoying!”

A few weeks in, I found myself secretly enjoying the assignment. It was a chance for

me to reflect on the fun I had over the weekend and share my numerous adventures with

Mrs. Sheridan. Every week, I got better and better at writing these entries. Instead of

simply listing the things I did, I would describe the environment, the people around me, my

emotions, and so forth. As a second-grader, it is pretty much a given that I couldn’t spell to

save my life, but in my mind, everything I wrote made sense. The writing was the easy part.

Anyone can tell a story in a journal. All they need is a pen and the thoughts in their

head. It’s private. It’s brief. It’s safe. If you want to truly test yourself, try telling a story in

front of a group of people. Some people are natural storytellers. They can just get up there

and speak, never looking back. However, a good portion of us isn’t like that. We need

preparation, whether it is content-related or just shaking off those nervous thoughts. When

Mrs. Sheridan asked us to tell our favorite story in front of the class on the last week of

school, I really did begin to panic. As a second-grader, I had never really needed to speak in

front of a large group of people other than my family. This was a whole new challenge for

me, so I was rightfully nervous.

In order to prepare for this end-of-the-year assignment, my friend RJ and I took

turns reading our entries to each other. “Last weekend, I saw Spiderman 2 with my dad. It

was so awesome! I want to be Spiderman for Halloween this year,” I read. I went on about

how I wanted to meet Spiderman and stuff like that, somehow making out words from my

terrible spelling. RJ replied with his story about how he built this huge structure out of

Legos. With every story we read, we grew more and more confident, but I was still nervous

about speaking in front of the whole class. I tried to read my stories to as many people as I

could find, gaining confidence every time. I was learning to stress different parts of the

sentences for emphasis, annunciate more, and pace myself. I began to understand what it

took to tell a good story.

The day had finally come. I strode into the classroom confidently, awaiting my turn

to tell my story. I chose a story about my birthday party at Laser Quest, which was a laser

tag place and arcade; it was a second-grader’s dream. “Brett,” Mrs. Sheridan asked, “would

you like to come up and share a story?” I nervously made my way to the front of the

classroom. As I read from my journal, I realized that it was no different from reading to RJ

or my parents. The words flowed out of my mouth and I had the whole class interested in

what I had to say. As I spoke of laser guns, black lights, and Skee Ball, every student

salivated. Because of my true enjoyment of the experience, it made my writing more

passionate and my story more enjoyable. By seeing the intrigue on everyone’s faces, it

made me realize that telling a story can really do a lot. If I had a microphone while I was up

there, I would’ve finished my story and then dropped the mic.

Although I was only a young kid at the time, I felt like I had built the basis for

storytelling back then. My years of education have certainly improved my skillset and made

me much more comfortable with public speaking and storytelling in general, but I can

pinpoint the start of it all to that second grade class with Mrs. Sheridan. A story is powerful.

A story is enjoyable. A story is bold.