Tales of a Fourth Grade Dragon

Dear Mr. Vadney,

I don’t know if you would recall me after all these decades, and I’m sure you wouldn’t recognize me now, but you’re one of the few teachers that I remember from grade school. There are parts of that school I wish I could forget, such as the time that I asked a boy I liked (Tim? Jim? Jonny?) if I could kiss him on Valentine’s Day and he made a face that could only be described as “frog eats something even nastier than a fly.” And then there was the bully in our class who sat on my calculator and broke it, and I had to bring it home, crying, and tell my parents. My mom yelled at me for being so careless, but I don’t remember if I ratted out the bully or not. Probably not—my mom would assume it was just me being clumsy, as I invariably was.

But Mr. Vadney, you were a bright spot in a school that seemed more jungle than playground. I remember you telling a Halloween story about a witch where the punchline involved you shouting “Boo!” really loudly and making half the class jump. Man, I laughed so hard I nearly cried.

It was more than the way you made the classroom fun, though. You believed that learning was meant to be enjoyed, but you also believed the true power of education was to find a connection with your students. And you often did that through stories. Both the ones you told in front of the classroom and the ones that were on the page.

And, boy, did I love to read. You had a book nook in the corner of the classroom with all kinds of wonderful adventure stories. My absolute favorite was a tiny chapter book called My Father’s Dragon, which was equal parts fun and funny, heartbreaking and silly. I read that book so many times during story hour, and I always found something new to enjoy when I read it again. I knew my parents would never buy it for me, and so I read the book almost every week to try to memorize the whole thing. The idea was that I could still tell the story to myself even if I didn’t have the actual book as a guide.

I must have done a good job of it because I can still remember almost the whole story now, as well as picture in my mind’s eye all the funny illustrations of the animals and Elmer, the boy who outsmarted the savage beasts on Wild Island.

And then came the ultimate gift that you gave—at the end of the year when we were all saying goodbye, both the kids to each other and us to you, you had one last surprise for us. “Everyone gets to take their favorite book home,” you told us with a grin.

You better believe I rushed up to grab My Father’s Dragon. No one else wanted such a strange little tale, but it was one that I loved more than any other story. And I still have it on my bookshelf today, that same dog-eared cover, now slightly more worn and slightly more loved. And I’ve read it to my own kids, and they love it just as much as I did when I was in your classroom.

I knew that my family would be moving after fourth grade, and I wouldn’t be coming back to the same school or the same kids at all—we were going to live in the mountains half an hour’s drive away. The only thing I could take with me from that school were my memories and that book you gave me.

But I still look back with fondness at the storytelling teacher who inspired me, and I know that you must have inspired many more creative kids like me who dreamed of so many strange little stories. And now I’m writing my strange little stories down and hopefully inspiring a new generation of writers to tell their own stories too.

Thank you for helping me survive the wild jungle of elementary school in one piece. I don’t know if I could have done it without you, and I’m grateful for the countless ways you encouraged and inspired creativity in me and doubtless so many others.

Wishing you the best wherever you are,

Alison McBain