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Five days remained before my students would burst away from me forever. Monday morning of our last week together, I put five words up on the board: writing, reading, thinking, speaking, listening.

Judy Darling

"Now," I asked "have I taught you to write?"

They groaned

"Yes, Mrs Darling, we wrote too much. Journals nearly every day, expository essays on every story we read, proposals, letters, narratives—name the mode and I'm sure we wrote it."

"How about reading? Did we cover that?"

One more groan, though not quite as intense, probably a grudging concession on their part that the stories were pretty cool and worth their time.

"Thinking?"

Yes, they concurred, we had done our share of thinking.

"Speaking?"

Now it was my turn to groan, for one thing they did thoroughly was speak, in and out of turn, foolishly, wisely, and always energetically.

"But what about listening? Do you think we learned to listen well in this class?"

A curious silence settled over the room. Listening is one of the five strands in the North Carolina Language Arts Curriculum, and perhaps the least attended to by the harried classroom teacher. Even the students realized we had not done much listening, per se. I had their attention, a rare occurrence anyway, and more so considering the imminent end of a seemingly interminable year. So in the face of their curious silence, I held up a tape of The Bones of Louella Brown by Ann Petry. Three weeks before, I had attended a dynamic two-day workshop at North Carolina State University based on the curricula applications of Scribbling Women. We came to learn what teaching opportunities might be lurking in radio drama, a medium definitely underutilized in our present video age. Teachers around the workshop table leaned in to listen to the dramatization of Louisa's story, a woman determined not to be the seventh maiden to any dashing but heartless, prince, or again, enjoying the wonderfully haunting laugh of Louella Brown as she pricks the conscience of Peabody, the uppity undertaker who tried to remove her bones from Yew Tree Cemetery. Of even greater pleasure was our second day's activity—imagining the dramatization of Nella Larsen's short story, "Sanctuary." Participants looked into the details of this wrenching tale of suspense and bitter paradox, struggling to select which sounds would best translate the story into a listening experience. Suggestions were so good, so creative, so vivid—one group presented their script of effects complete with musical performance—that afterwards I felt I had "heard" the story, not just read it.

With but five days left of my instructional year, and with every student keyed up and ready to "jet," as they say, I held up a cassette and said, "It's not too late to learn!"

So no one had to convince me to try radio plays in my classroom. With but five days left of my instructional year, and with every student keyed up and ready to "jet," as they say, I held up a cassette and said, "It's not too late to learn!" From the first strains of "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen," my dear students were captivated with the voice and the message of The Bones of Louella Brown. The medium itself was new for them, and the voice was compelling.

But they are only 15, they detest reading, and they struggle to focus attention for long. Therefore, using radio plays called for some dynamic instruction. I seized upon and sustained their interest first by giving them an index card and guiding them to write down the character names as each one made their first appearance on the tape. Then I would stop the tape as scenes changed to check for their understanding, to discuss the sounds and what they meant. Soon they were asking me to stop and rewind because they missed a detail or wanted to hear the sounds again. They were fascinated with the difference in the sound of Louella's pine casket being opened, a creak that stood in stark contrast to the rich, smooth movement of the mahogany casket of Louella's alter ego, the Countess of Castro, as it was opened. They were disappointed when the bell rang before the tape ended; they returned the second day (remember that now we have only four days left!) demanding that we finish the tape. Because our discussions on literature culminate in producing themes, everyone wrote a theme on their index card and turned it in before the bell. Our next class began with a look at all the themes, and the class concurred that the best one was "Color is only skin deep, but your kindness and goodness throughout your life will keep you in others' memories" and that perhaps the theme that needed the most revision was "It doesn't matter what cemetery you are buried in."

We now have only three days left together, and when they entered class on Wednesday, they begged for another radio play. I obliged them with the tape of Louisa by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. I warned them to listen carefully to the opening sounds of Louisa's hoe clanging on the rocks in her potato garden, and asked them to identify the mood such a sound sets for the listener. We paused and reviewed the words of the ballad Louisa sang. We kept our cast of characters again, and again we discussed what meanings were in the story. We compared the two plays to determine which was more realistic and which had a better message. And as Louisa's final whisper of "When I meet him I'll know it" fades out, they begin to ask—but they already know the answer. We only have two more days together, and we have to review for finals.

Delivering story is a challenge for all of us who stand before 30 reluctant readers five times a day.

The Scribbling Women project has given teachers an effective tool for classroom instruction. Delivering story is a challenge for all of us who stand before 30 reluctant readers five times a day. Not only do these radio plays deliver the story, but they also provide a dynamic experience with which to train students to listen more carefully. The quality of the productions and the extensive support material and lesson plans provide ample support for the most harried of teachers, even in the last week of school.


Judy Darling was the Wake County Teacher of the Year in 1995-97.

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