Tom, I LOVE IT! You are just the kind of teacher that age kid needs! Your stories, no doubt, went straight through their hearts and lodged in their brains. I think that's often the most effective route for learning! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas S. Fiske" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:28 AM Subject: Re: [ARMSTRONG] occupations > Dear Jill, > > When lessons were finished and there was maybe five minutes left in a > class, I would tell family stories, like "The Day My Wonderful Brother > Blew his Toe Off with a Shotgun." Sometimes I told family history > stories in which a murder took place. Or, I told stories about wacky > science. Each story had a moral and was edifying. The kids wanted > copies of the stories so I put them into a book called "Four on the > Floor." (My brother had only "four on the floor" on his right foot > after he shot his big toe off.) My son, an artist in Florida, drew > cartoons for each story. > > Tom

Thanks. There was a time when every kid in Arcadia knew about my brother and his big toe. It was a story about gun safety. Every once in a while when we eat a meal at an Arcadia restaurant, one of the pretty young ladies who is a hostess or waitress will ask me if I taught school and told the story about my brother blowing his foot off with a shotgun. The kids would tell their parents and the parents would ask the principal if he would let me sub when a teacher came down with pregnancy or whatever. I was not strong enough to do long term subbing, though. T Jill Johnston wrote: > Tom, > I LOVE IT! You are just the kind of teacher that age kid needs! Your > stories, no doubt, went straight through their hearts and lodged in their > brains. I think that's often the most effective route for learning! > >