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Teacher Spotlights: Patricia Robinson, West Feliciana High School, West Feliciana Parish by Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon
Once upon a time, late in the sweltering, steamy summer of 2002, teachers from Iberia, West Feliciana, and East Baton Rouge parish were summoned to contend for an NEH grant, "Folklife Studies for Louisiana Schools." This grant, awarded to Louisiana Voices, offered a gift to thirteen teachers: for four seasons, they would be able to study with folklife elders of the Pelican State. So over the Basin and through the trees came some of Louisiana's most dedicated teachers. Every three full-moons, these teachers would travel to the town called Red Stick for weekend reunions with the elders. During these reunions, the teachers listened very closely for new knowledge about their state. They listened to scholars, to craftspeople, to storytellers. They listened and listened until they couldn't listen anymore. But listening wasn't enough. So off the members went for fieldtrips—to see the houses of New Orleans' Seventh Ward and to dance for a chicken at Basile's Cajun Mardi Gras. They talked to many interesting people, and they talked to each other. They talked and talked until they couldn't talk anymore. But talking and listening still weren't enough. So home they would go to read the wise words of others. They read the stories of Jan Brunvand, Alice Walker and Scott Momaday (to name a few). They read and read until they couldn't read anymore. Then, after reading, talking, listening, studying, and writing for four full seasons, the time finally came for the teachers to give their students the gift of folklore. One teacher, Patricia Robinson, believed that the best she could give was the gift of storytelling. "Wouldn't it be nice," she mused, "if my speech students could learn the folk stories of Louisiana and then perform them for others?" She remembered fondly how Bertney Langley, a Koasati Indian, had, at one of the weekend reunions, told the story of how "The Bat Got Its Wings." Ms. Robinson hoped that her students would charm their listeners the way Bertney Langley had enchanted her. So Ms. Robinson told her juniors and seniors at West Feliciana High to read Swapping Stories. They were good students, so they read and read until they knew exactly which story they wanted to perform. One day, early on a chilly fall morning, Hallie Pilcher performed "The Old Woman and Her Pig." She liked this story because she thought it might annoy her friends. And she liked to annoy her friends. But why would this story be annoying? Just because a cat began to eat a rat, who began to gnaw on ropes, who began to tie up the butcher, who began to butcher the ox, who began to drink the water, who began to put out the fire, who began to burn the stick, who began to beat the dog, who began to bite the pig-all so that a pig would jump over the fence so the Old Woman could get home to her porridge! "That's not annoying," said her friends. "That's funny!" Well, if Hallie couldn't irritate her friends with an annoying story, then perhaps Karley Ferguson, on the same chilly morning, could perplex them with a not-so-funny joke. Karley was known for telling silly jokes, such as the one about the two pretzels walking down the street. "One was a-salted!" Or the one about why the skeleton couldn't cross the road. "Because he didn't have the guts!" Karley loved these weird jokes, even though they made her friends groan. (Or perhaps because they made them groan.) So when she read through Swapping Stories, she decided to tell the story of the "Well-Dressed Deer." That story would really make them groan! With the enthusiasm of a stage player, she recounted a Louisiana folktale about an old man and his wife who went hunting. She told of how this old man didn't want his wife to go, but he finally said okay—if she would go through a training session. When they got to the clearing for target practice, the old man remembered that he had to pick up his friends, Boudreaux and Thibodaux. So he left his wife in the practice field and said, "Don't shoot the gun. Just sit here and wait until I get back." As soon as he left, the old man heard "pow!" He hurried back, only to find a man with his hands up in the air. The wife was holding a gun to him. "Please don't shoot," said the man. "I'll give you the deer. Just let me get my saddle off it." Just as she had hoped, Karley's friends groaned and groaned. But the next storyteller, Michelle Bibbins, didn't want her friends to groan. She wanted them to learn about how women got a little power in this world. So she told the story called "She Has the Key." She told of how, one day, when the first woman grew weary of her husband having all the power, she went to the Lord to ask for some power of her own. It was unfair for the man to have it all! After all, they had been equals until that sneaky snake tricked her. When the woman told the Lord about how her husband worked her too hard and was mean and hateful, all because the Lord had given him too much power, the Lord said, "Okay," and then he handed her a key. "What good is this?" she asked in disbelief. In a quiet voice, the Lord said, "Just lock the door." The students liked this story (at least the girl students did). And that's just what Michelle had wanted. But the storytelling session wasn't over. On that same fall morning, Superintendent Lindsey just happened to stop in, and he told a local legend that scared the wits out of him when he was young. It was the story of "Tump," a troubled boy from around Tunica Hills who behaved so much like an animal that his parents kept him chained in a "little house" in the backyard. The children, when they walked to school, would taunt Tump. Especially little Bobby Johnson. But one day, when Bobby Johnson was walking to his grandmother's, Tump got loose and ripped little Bobby into pieces. For years and years, people would talk about Tump sightings. Even now, if something is missing, old men will say "That's Tump." But they never found him. And the legend lives on to this day. Well, with all that storytelling in her classroom, Ms. Robinson was beginning to see that, indeed, she had also become a folklife elder. She had given her students the gift of storytelling. They even liked to tell stories on her! But only because they loved her so much. In Ms. Robinson's speech class, storytelling had become just what it was supposed to be: a way to entertain, to teach, to annoy, to tease, and to reveal. But most of all storytelling was a way for Ms. Robinson and her students to feel connected to each other. On that chilly fall morning, when they all gathered round in a circle to share even more stories, they began to believe the quotation by Anne L. Watson that Ms. Robinson had written on the board: "Stories tell us what we already knew and forgot, and remind us of what we haven't yet imagined." And all the elders were very pleased. |
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