short story about education importance

The Best Short Stories about School and Schooldays

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What are the best short stories which are set in school, or which focus on school and one’s schooldays? There are plenty of stories which are ‘set in schools’ in the sense of being set reading for schoolchildren, but it’s harder to find some canonical and classic short stories which are about schooldays.

The following stories are all about school in one way or another. In one story, a couple of schoolboys play truant and bunk off school; in another, two schoolchildren of the future learn about old-fashioned schooling; and in yet another, we find ourselves observing schoolchildren on another planet, Venus.

What unites all of these short fictions is a focus on the experience of schooldays and how those formative years affect us; they are also about how schoolchildren tend to behave with one another.

James Joyce, ‘An Encounter’.

This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me …

This story, from Joyce’s 1914 collection Dubliners , is narrated by a man who is recalling an episode from his childhood, and specifically his schooldays in Dublin. The boy recounts how one of his schoolfriends, Leo Dillon, introduced him and a number of other boys to the adventure and excitement of the Wild West, before the two of them played truant from school one day.

They encounter a strange old man who seems to take an unusual interest in the boys’ love lives. This is a story best aimed at slightly older readers, given the unsavoury aspect of the strange old man …

Isaac Asimov, ‘The Fun They Had’.

This is a short story by the Russian-born American writer Isaac Asimov (1920-92). Like Asimov’s novel The Naked Sun , this story is one that has taken on new significance in the wake of 2020 and the shift to remote learning and working, and the themes of this 1951 story are as relevant to our own time as they were over seventy years ago when Asimov wrote it.

In the story, which is set in the year 2157, two children find an old paper book and reflect on how quaint it is, when compared with television screens on which they read in their own time. Stories about school, especially very short stories that are just a few pages long, lend themselves to study at school, and Asimov’s tale is light enough and brief enough to fit the bill, while also carrying some intriguing commentary on education and technology, among other things.

Ray Bradbury, ‘All Summer in a Day’.

This is a 1954 short story by the American science-fiction author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). The story is set on Venus, where the sun only comes out once every seven years for a couple of hours; the rest of the time, the sun is hidden behind clouds and rains fall constantly.

‘All Summer in a Day’ is about a group of schoolchildren who have grown up on Venus, the sons and daughters of ‘rocket men and women’ who came to the planet from Earth, as the children prepare to experience the first ‘summer’ on Venus that they can remember. But one of the children, a young girl, remembers experiencing rain when she lived back on Earth. The other children grow jealous of her experience, and decide to act – with devastating results.

Donald Barthelme, ‘The School’.

‘The School’ is probably the best-known short story by the American writer Donald Barthelme (1931-89), whose work is sometimes labelled as ‘postmodernist’ (a label he was not entirely comfortable with, but which he accepted) and, occasionally, ‘metafiction’ (a label he was less happy with).

Published in the New Yorker in 1974, ‘The School’ is a short story about death, in which a series of animals and, eventually, children die at a school. One of the teachers at the school narrates these events, and the story ends with a discussion between the teacher and his pupils about the meaning of life when all life is filled with, and must end in, death.

Sandra Cisneros, ‘Eleven’.

Let’s conclude this pick of the best school-set stories with a very short piece of contemporary fiction. ‘Eleven’ is a short story by the American writer Sandra Cisneros (born 1954), who is known for her novel The House on Mango Street among other works.

In this story, a girl’s eleventh birthday is ruined when her teacher forces her to take responsibility for somebody else’s sweater. The narrator bursts into tears in front of her classmates and laments the fact that she isn’t older. Of all the stories included on this list, ‘Eleven’ is the one which delves most deeply into the psyche of a young schoolchild and her experience in school.

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

Type your email…

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

• Write for Tell-A-Tale

Importance of Education

All my life, as far as I can recall, there was one thing my mother always made sure I understood – to be independent. She always used to tell me that everything else is secondary; education is of prime importance. According to her, it is like a gust of fresh air that cleanses the stagnant mind and lets you think clearly. Though I never understood why she said that, I used to nod in affirmation; until recently, when I realized why she used to stress the importance of education so much. Let me share a story with you all today. Pranita was 15 when she was about to elope with her boyfriend. She was ready to give up everything – her education, her family and trust her entire life into the hands of someone she knew just for few months. But on the day of eloping, she was caught by her dad. Furious, he sent her to some relative’s house in a far away village and there she was kept under strict supervision. She didn’t wish to continue studies and neither did anyone force her. She spent her time doing household chores until 3 years later, when she was married to Ashish, a guy of her dad’s selection. Pranita didn’t object. Infact, she welcomed it as the much needed change in her monotonous life. Ashish ran a small business in partnership with his friend. Pranita had to attend the business parties thrown by clients along with Ashish. She enjoyed it and relished it. But time doesn’t stay the same, for good times do come to an end. One year passed in a jiffy and Pranita was enjoying her new life with Ashish. But soon destiny played a cruel joke on them which changed their lives forever. Ashish’s business partner tricked him and ran away with the entire money. They went broke. Soon they were on streets. They sold their home, jewellery to make a living. Ashish tried his hands at different jobs but nothing worked. In the midst of all these troubles, they had two little ones to feed. Frustrated with the troubles, Ashish became a slave of alcohol and started hitting Pranati. Her life turned into hell. There was nothing she could do, for she didn’t know how to lead a life if she stepped out of Ashish’s home. So she took it all silently, seeing the face of her little ones. Things weren’t getting any better. Situation worsened with passing time and so did Ashish’s cruelty. He took loans to satiate his thirst for alcohol. Hundreds turned into thousands and thousands turned into lakhs. The loan sharks started asking back the money and one fine day, he ran away leaving behind Pranati and the kids to face the wrath of the loan sharks. What could she do? She wasn’t educated nor did she have any idea how things worked in real world. She tried to find a job but couldn’t. Life isn’t that easy. It became difficult to make the ends meet. She cried regretting her past. She wished she had payed attention towards studies and had learnt something. Then this day wouldn’t have come. She would have at least known how to deal with the situation. Today, she is still striving to find a work with decent pay to make the ends meet. But there is one thing she does – sending her little ones to school. She stresses the importance of education to every child she meets. She tells them how education is the only that could help them lead a better life. So that was Pranita’s story. Neither she, nor her dad had realized the importance of education and in the end, they paid a huge price for it. Seeing this changed  my perspective towards life. I now know why my mom used to stress so much about education. Good education is that weapon which can aid you out of  difficulties. It gives you the courage needed to face any situation. It gives our life a sense of security. Education is freedom. It gives you wings that help you reach heights. I am lucky to have parents who know the importance of education and sent me to school. But there are many children who are denied this right to education. Kids are either made to work or are married of at an early age. Join hands and help to save such kids. Help them get back their childhood and secure their future.  Because with every child that joins school, our country will progress towards development.

(This post was written as part of #Selfies4School campaign by  Breakthrough TV )

You may also like

The Ordinary #AprilWritingChallenge [Winner]

Family Is A Work in Progress #AprilWritingChallenge...

A Picture Can Heal A Thousand Wounds...

Glad To Be Simple [POEM]

About the author.

Swathi Shenoy

Leave a comment x.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• About Mercy Home
• Inclusion and Diversity
• Our History
• Our Stories
• Our Locations
• Youth Residential Program
• Community Care
• Friends First Mentoring
• Kids We Serve

• Donate Online
• Gift Planning
• Shop Online
• Matching Gifts
• Years of Mercy Book
• Corporate Partnerships
• Marathon Fundraising
• Advocate for Kids
• Mentor a Child
• Attend a Chicago Charity Event
• For Professionals
• Sunday Mass
• The Holy Bible
• Refer a Youth

(312) 738-7560 

• Phone / Language

The Importance of Education

Grace had never received even one “A” in school.

When the 13-year-old girl arrived at Mercy Home, catching up in class was the furthest thing from her mind. She had long ago lost hope that she would ever be a good student. And why bother at this point? She kept getting promoted to the next grade even though she only received a grade besides “F” in subjects like physical education and art—and even then she was barely passing.

“I was never good in school,” she explained. “I didn’t see the point of doing homework or studying.”

She had been that way her whole life because no one had ever expected more of her.

Before Mercy Home, I never thought I would get a C in school, much less an A. I actually feel like I can succeed now.

Her mother had been taken away when she was only five years old. She had been sent to live with her aunt, who didn’t want Grace in the first place. Her aunt didn’t make much money and didn’t want to spend what little extra she did have at the time on Grace. She wanted to spend it on her own two children, Grace’s cousins.

And things weren’t any better at school. Her teachers couldn’t keep control over their classrooms, and the same troublemakers learned that they could disrupt class year after year. Eventually, Grace fell in with the “troublemakers”—and would stay out with them long into the evening, just so she wouldn’t have to go home.

“Things were so bad at home that I did anything to avoid going back there,” she said. “And I thought they were my friends. I thought they cared about me.”

Grace lived like this for almost a decade, never realizing she had deserved more love than what her family showed her.

But then, for the first time at 13, she was told she would have to be held back a grade. She probably would have dropped out—she had gotten to where she hardly bothered to go to school anyway.

But the teacher who told Grace she would have to repeat seventh grade said something to her she would never forget. She told Grace that she noticed she was actually really good in science.

Grace was amazed—no one had told her she seemed good at anything in school. The teacher went on to tell her that she could make up a few detention hours by sorting lab specimens. Grace realized she enjoyed the work a lot, and developed a rapport with the teacher—eventually telling her teacher about her troubles at home.

“It was a relief to finally tell someone about what was going on,” she said. “And my teacher actually seemed to care about my problems.”

The teacher knew from her parish about Mercy Home, and told Grace that it would be a stable place away from her difficult life with her aunt. It would also be a place where she could get away from her bad social habits.

Grace was very interested—and contacted our  admissions department.

Since coming to Mercy Home, Grace has finally seen the importance of education. Now, not only does she have a safe place to live away from the strife with her aunt, she is finally bringing home report cards completely full of passing grades.

And, this semester, she finally brought home her first A: biology.

“Before Mercy Home, I never thought I would get a C in school, much less an A,” she said. “I actually feel like I can succeed now.”

Thank you for making possible wonderful transformations for children like Grace.

Education gives our kids the opportunity to build a brighter future. Your gift will help them get there.

Disclaimer: Because we care deeply about protecting our children’s privacy, the names and certain identifying details in this story have been changed.

Discover More

After a Year at Mercy Home, the Future Looks Bright

April 18, 2024

From ‘Invisible’ Kid to Straight A Student

January 24, 2024

Youth Reflects on Experience at Mercy Home

December 6, 2023

Actually Your Story Gave Me Lot Of Encouragement I Love It

Comments are closed.

Useful links.

• Join Our Charity Running Team
• Resources for Youth and Families
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Rent Payment Form
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use
• Do Not Sell My Data
• Accessibility Statement

Our Other Sites

• Planned Giving
• Mission Press
• Mercy Beaucoup

Stay Informed

1140 W. Jackson Blvd. Chicago, IL 60607

Get in Touch

If you are a child in need or to refer a child (877) 24-START

To make donation by phone or for any donation related questions, please call (877) 637-2955 or Donate online By Mail Download Form

For all other inquiries (312) 738-7560

© 2024 The Mission of Our Lady of Mercy, Inc. dba Mercy Home for Boys & Girls. All rights reserved.

Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, a 501(c)(3), licensed child care institution and licensed child welfare agency. EIN: 36-2171726

Short Kid Stories

Never be short of short kid stories.

Right to Education

By anish vedsen.

Once upon a time, a girl named Rima lived in Garden city, Bangalore. She was a lively child who loved playing, studying, writing short stories, dancing, and singing. She was a bright student of the Indian International School.

One day her father got some work in their native village; Rima was pleased to hear the news. She convinced her father to accompany him on the trip. It was a matter of two days, so her father agreed. She packed her luggage and was very excited to visit their village.

When she reached there, she saw the kaccha houses / temporary houses made of mud or clay. She felt the quietness of village life. There were areas full of greenery where one could breathe fresh air. Cattle were moving around, and farmers were working in the field. Children were playing and enjoying themselves. Then she saw some boys going to a village school and girls going to farms with sharp knives. It was weird to her. She thought, “Why are girls not going to school?”

She followed one girl named Bindra to the farm. Rima asked her, “Hi, why are you not going to school?”

Bindra said, ” I never went to school. My brother goes to school, and I help my parents on the farm.” Her answer shocked Rima.

Then she told Bindra that according to the Constitution of India, “free and compulsory education for the age group of six to fourteen years is the Fundamental Right of all children.”

Ahe continued, “So it would help if you went to school, and afterwards you can help your parents. And every citizen of India is treated as equal, and there is no difference between boys and girls. Governments have created equal opportunities for everyone. So, we should follow it.”

These words touched Bindra because she also wanted to study like her brother. So she promised that henceforth she would also go to school to fulfil her dreams and be a strength for her parents.

The moral of the story is that education gives us identity and helps us make the right decisions.

Enjoyed that? Then you might like these...

The selfish giant.

A selfish giant owns a beautiful garden but won't let the children play in it.

By Oscar Wilde

The fairy finders chapters 9 and 10.

The final installment about an adventurous gang of children who discover they are sharing their beloved wood with some pesky, meddlesome fairies.

By Melanie McDowell

The duck with cold feet.

Basil is afraid of getting cold feet...so his parents and a Canada Goose come to the rescue!

By Kenneth Lapointe

Peter saves the village.

Peter bravely saves the village from a herd of elephants.

By Dorothy Massey

Little one-eye, two-eyes and three-eyes.

A girl is mistreated by her sisters One-Eye and Three-Eyes. When a kind woman provides her with a way to always eat well, her sisters become very suspicious.

By Brothers Grimm

The dog who loved the water.

Jet the dog’s love of water gets him into a lot of trouble, and his owner Lyla realizes she has to figure out how to end his bad habits before summer ends.

By Becca Wierwille

• By: Anish Vedsen
• Age range: 3 to 5 , 6 to 8 , 9 to12
• Category: By Children , Indian , Original
• Reading time: 01 - 05 mins
• Full Catalogue

• About PDK International
• About Kappan
• Issue Archive
• Permissions

About The Grade

• Writers Guidelines
• Upcoming Themes
• Artist Guidelines
• Subscribe to Kappan

Select Page

11 amazing education stories from 2018

By Kristen Doerer, Alexander Russo | Dec 19, 2018 | The Grade

From a crowded field of great education journalism, we single out the best of the best for 2018.

By Alexander Russo and Kristen Doerer

Rounding up the best education stories of the year is an annual delight – an early holiday gift featuring 11 amazing pieces of education journalism across nine categories.

This is our third year doing it. But it never gets any easier to whittle down so many impressive pieces of journalism into a manageable list. This year especially required more ruthlessness than we would have liked. There was so much excellent education journalism about important topics like school inequality, inadequate classroom instruction, school safety fears, college completion, federal education policy, and immigration.

As in the past, the emphasis is on journalism that’s compelling, memorable, deeply reported, and nuanced. Some selections have had an immediate, real-world impact. Others have shaped public understanding and generated a conversation that lasted long after they were first published.

So what follows here is a highly opinionated, selective, and in some cases quirky list. (If you want a more inclusive list, check out our “ Best Education Journalism of the Week ” archive for 2018, which contains tons more great pieces.)

Take a look and let us know what you think. What did we miss? What did we get right?

Racially diverse and politically progressive, New York City nonetheless permits many of its middle and high schools to pre-screen students for grades and test scores, systematically excluding African-American and Latino students from the top-scoring schools in the city. That’s what makes Elizabeth Harris and Winnie Hu’s New York Times report,  A Shadow System Feeds Segregation in New York City Schools , such a powerful story. It lays bare the scope and depth of a problem that is too easily dismissed as someone else’s concern or fault. Harris and Hu’s scathing examination of how New York City also highlights parents’ voices – too often missing – who express understandable frustration over a system that gives the edge to families that can pay for tutoring or a consultant. With one in five middle and high schools screening students for grades and test scores, write Harris and Hu, “No other city in the country screens students for as many schools as New York.”

Over the past few years, students from Louisiana’s TM Landry school – many of them African-American – have gained admission to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Videos of them opening their acceptance emails have gone viral on social media and been featured on cable news. But the reality of these students’ experiences was much grimmer, as reported in the blockbuster New York Times story, Louisiana School Made Headlines for Sending Black Kids to Elite Colleges. Here’s the Reality. In it, reporters Erica Green and Katie Benner expose the fairy tale story of the school’s magical success. Producing the story required deep reporting and a keen nose for bullshit. The reporters interviewed 46 sources – parents, students, former teachers, and the police – examined incorrect transcripts, college applications, and court documents detailing physical abuse against students. The writing is powerful, and the stories told by parents and students are chilling.

Honorable mentions: Rural Alabama charter opens as first integrated school in Sumter County (Trish Crain for AL.com), Drawing school zones to make classrooms less segregated (Alvin Chang for Vox), Kicked Out (Avi Wolfman-Arent for WHYY Philadelphia), and  Charlottesville’s Other Jim Crow Legacy (Erica Green for the New York Times & Annie Waldman for ProPublica).

Further reading:  New York Times story exposes school fraud and media credulity

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM

Research shows that teaching kids through explicit instruction in how written language works is a key part of helping them learn to read, but that’s not how most American schools are doing it. The result is a large number of students who are not confident readers — and too many that can’t read at all. This is the tragedy revealed by the APM Reports documentary Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read?  Reported by senior correspondent Emily Hanford, the hour-long segment discusses pedagogy and research but focuses the debate in the stories of memorable characters such as one district official’s efforts to raise students’ reading scores and some education school professors’ resistance to phonics in the University of Mississippi’s teaching program. But the main reason we love Hard Words so much is that it addresses such an important and widespread problem, and has rekindled an important conversation that had gone quiet for too long.

Further reading:  Hard reporting: Why reading went under the radar for so long

If you missed it in the deluge of back-to-school stories this fall, Sara Mosle’s New York Times Magazine feature story, Can Good Teaching Be Taught? is well worth going back to read. The story is focused on the educators at an Atlanta elementary school where they are trying to improve student achievement by helping teachers get better at classroom instruction. The characters are carefully drawn. The issues and the stakes are clear. Mosle also provides one of the best recapitulations of the power and the limits of the school reform movement in recent memory: “There was something worse than no reform, it turned out: unsuccessful reform.”

Honorable mentions: Julie Washington’s Quest to Get Schools to Respect African-American English  (William Brennan for The Atlantic), What San Diego High School Faculty Learned After a Year of Personalized Learning (Michael Elsen-Rooney for the Hechinger Report), and Age 16 and struggling to read (Adeshina Emmanuel for Chalkbeat Chicago).

SCHOOL SAFETY

Following a spate of highly publicized incidents, school districts around the country are frantically working to prevent the next school shooting. No surprise that some of their efforts are misguided or excessive. In Bethany Barnes’ masterful narrative, Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter , school officials suspect a high school student of being a potential school shooter and refer him for further screening. Published in The Oregonian, the story’s opening is chilling: “Like almost every parent who sends a child to a school in America these days, Mark feared the next school shooting.” Barnes’ inside look into the teenage boy’s home is an amazing feat of building trust and humanizing her characters’ experiences.

Honorable mentions: The School Shootings That Weren’t (Anya Kamenetz, Alexis Arnold, and Emily Cardinali for NPR), Inside the $3 Billion School Security Industry (Mark Keierleber for The 74), and  School shootings have fueled a $2.7 billion school safety industry  (John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich for the Washington Post).

Further reading:  How Bethany Barnes became a star education reporter

THE PARKLAND TRAGEDY

If you’ve been following the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, you’ve probably figured out that what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that day was tragic not only because of the senseless deaths of so many students and teachers but also because there were so many missed warning signs, procedural fails, and operational meltdowns. And you’ve probably been reading a lot of Scott Travis stories in the Sun Sentinel. There are lots of them. And they’re good. Among the best examples are one piece Travis wrote about how the school district was overconfident about the shooter’s chances of thriving,  School officials once predicted Parkland shooter could be ‘model student’ , and another about how the school was overly casual about its disciplinary procedures, Schools’ culture of tolerance lets students slide .

Honorable mentions: Parkland shooter always in trouble, never expelled. (Carol Marbin Miller & Kyra Gurney for the Miami Herald), Stoneman Douglas resource officer remains haunted by massacre. (Eli Saslow for the Washington Post), A Broken Trust (Benjamin Herold for EdWeek), and  Stoneman Douglas Shooter Was Assigned To Controversial Broward Discipline Program, Officials Now Say (Jessica Bakeman for WLRN).

Further reading:  Misleading coverage of school shootings in 2018

SPECIAL EDUCATION

Our schools’ struggle to provide appropriate educational services for students with disabilities is a long and frustrating one, often featuring inadequate resources, under-trained and poorly supervised teachers, low expectations, and racial bias. That’s a big part of what makes Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker story, Georgia’s Separate and Unequal Special-Education System , such a powerful story. Following Seth and his mother Latoya, Aviv exposes a special-education system that keeps kids – disproportionately black boys – with special needs separate from their peers and struggles to provide them with adequate services. But Aviv’s work is more than just an expose. She dives deep into the many challenges Seth and Lotoya face, and the resulting story pulls in the reader and makes you feel for all involved: Seth who is so tortured by the system he starts to introduce himself as “bad”; his mother who is desperately fighting to get him the education he deserves; and the teachers who lacked the support and training needed and treat Seth terribly.

Honorable mentions: For a Teen with Autism, Being Different Was Seen as Being Dangerous (David Desroches for Connecticut Public Radio), and Back of the Class (Susannah Frame and Taylor Mirfendereski for KING5).

Further reading:  From cheating scandals to broken schools, how New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv tells education stories

STUDENT MOBILITY

It’s increasingly well-known that student mobility among different schools makes success harder for both teachers and students. And there were several great looks at the impact of housing instability and student transience in 2018. But the best among them was Lessons Lost , the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series by Erin Richards that showed how few students have enough stability in their lives to attend the same school for multiple years. The problem is probably more dramatic than most of us imagine. In one school, only eight of the 47 third graders remained by eighth grade, creating enormous continuity and engagement challenges. The series also features a national overview showing that half the states don’t track or post data on student transience . And those states that do track numbers do so differently, making comparisons all but impossible.

Honorable mentions: The children of 8B: One classroom, 31 journeys, and the reason it’s so hard to fix Detroit’s schools (Erin Einhorn for Chalkbeat Detroit), Reading, Writing, Evicted (Bethany Barnes for The Oregonian), How Neighborhoods Shape Children for Life (Emily Badger and Quatrong Bui for the New York Times), and  Putting Puerto Rico’s Schools Back on Track  (Andrew Ujifusa for EdWeek).

THE YEAR OF THE TEACHER

The U. S. Department of Education’s troubled TEACH Grant program has been converting grants intended to encourage teachers who work in high-need areas into loans that teachers have to pay back. NPR reporter and editor Cory Turner spent much of the past year uncovering this story, with Chris Arnold and others. Their coverage led 19 U.S. senators to send a letter to DeVos calling for immediate action and resulted in renewed promises from the USDE to help those teachers wrongly hit with unexpected debts. Thoughtful, nose-to-the-grindstone reporting can make a real difference. Read the entire series here: The Trouble with TEACH Grants .

Honorable mentions: Midterms test the durability of the teacher uprising  (Moriah Balingit for the Washington Post), Fighting Poverty, Drugs, and Even Violence, All on a Teacher’s Salary ( Dana Goldstein for the NYT), and  An Addict Dies in a School Restroom. He Was a Teacher. (Michael Wilson for the New York Times).

EDUCATING IMMIGRANT, REFUGEE, and ELL STUDENTS

A Betrayal , published in New York Magazine and ProPublica, is an enthralling and heart-wrenching story about a teenage boy who escaped MS-13 in El Salvador only to be pulled back into the violent gang in a Long Island high school. In the U.S., the teen makes a deal with the police and begins informing on the gang with the expectation the police would help him get out of it. Instead, ICE begins a deportation case against him, jailing him alongside those he informed on. And the school system played a role. Hannah Dreier spent months navigating a school wary of press coverage, gaining the trust of her sources, and examining hundreds of messages. She then tied her subject’s suspenseful story to a broader one on immigration in the US, ICE, and school policy.

Honorable mentions: In a Migrant Shelter Classroom, ‘It’s Always Like the First Day of School’ (Dana Goldstein and Manny Fernandez for the NYT), Education for immigrants: One person’s journey to enroll in higher education (Mike Elsen-Rooney for the Indianapolis Star), and Turning rampant anti-Muslim bullying into teachable moments (Leila Fadel for NPR).

Further reading:  Not just any high school story: How a ProPublica immigration reporter profiled a Long Island high school student trying to get out of MS-13

HIGHER EDUCATION

The story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is full of students with big dreams but many obstacles, including among them the pathetic under-funding of the schools themselves. Casey Parks’ New Yorker feature story, A College Degree from an H.B.C.U., More than Fifteen Years in the Making , explores these issues through the experiences of Dorian Ford, a young mother from Louisiana who graduates high school underprepared for college-level work and then struggles mightily to take and pass classes while also raising two boys. Her challenges – among them finding working internet and the time to write papers – are interspersed with the long story of how the HBCU she attends, Grambling State, was historically starved of funding by the state. It’s an amazing read, even if you think you don’t care much about anything that’s not strictly about the K-12 system.

Honorable mentions: They Wanted Desegregation. They Settled for Money, and It’s About to Run Out (Adam Harris for The Chronicle of Higher Education), Education for All… Even a ‘Nazi’? (Greg Toppo for Inside Higher Ed), and  Meet the New Mega-University (Goldie Blumenstyk for the Chronicle of Higher Education).

Further reading:  Widening the lens: What makes Casey Parks’ New Yorker story so good

That’s our list. Think you can do better? Show us what you got.

Related posts

Best education journalism of 2017

Best education journalism of 2016

Coming in January: Predictions and story recommendations for the new year, favorite bylines and outlets, and best practices for education journalists.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kristen Doerer

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.

Related Posts

Remote reporting doesn’t work, either.

January 5, 2022

‘Sesame Street’ Researchers Slam Media for “Either/Or” Approach

June 22, 2015

Enrollment ups and downs, unearthing special ed secrets, & episode 2 of NPR’s new podcast: 🏆 Best Education Journalism of the Week 🏆 (5/20/2022)

May 20, 2022

Is it too soon to call remote learning a failed experiment?

May 5, 2020

The Grade provides independent analysis of media coverage of education, helping to promote and improve the quality of that coverage. The Grade publishes weekly columns, a free newsletter featuring timely media commentary, and an annual update on newsroom diversity in education journalism. While hosted by KappanOnline, editorial decisions are The Grade's. For questions or responses to content, please contact us at  Alexander Russo  or @alexanderrusso.

Recent Posts

Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning

What Makes Storytelling So Effective For Learning?

This is the second of two posts co-written by Vanessa and Lani Peterson, Psy.D., a psychologist, professional storyteller and executive coach.

Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that leaders have to influence, teach, and inspire. What makes storytelling so effective for learning? For starters, storytelling forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, and values that unite people. When it comes to our countries, our communities, and our families, we understand intuitively that the stories we hold in common are an important part of the ties that bind.

This understanding also holds true in the business world, where an organization’s stories, and the stories its leaders tell, help solidify relationships in a way that factual statements encapsulated in bullet points or numbers don’t.

Connecting learners Good stories do more than create a sense of connection. They build familiarity and trust, and allow the listener to enter the story where they are, making them more open to learning. Good stories can contain multiple meanings so they’re surprisingly economical in conveying complex ideas in graspable ways. And stories are more engaging than a dry recitation of data points or a discussion of abstract ideas. Take the example of a company meeting.

At Company A, the leader presents the financial results for the quarter. At Company B, the leader tells a rich story about what went into the “win” that put the quarter over the top. Company A employees come away from the meeting knowing that they made their numbers. Company B employees learned about an effective strategy in which sales, marketing, and product development came together to secure a major deal. Employees now have new knowledge, new thinking, to draw on. They’ve been influenced. They’ve learned.

Something for everyone Another storytelling aspect that makes it so effective is that it works for all types of learners. Paul Smith, in “Leader as Storyteller: 10 Reasons It Makes a Better Business Connection”, wrote:

In any group, roughly 40 percent will be predominantly visual learners who learn best from videos, diagrams, or illustrations. Another 40 percent will be auditory, learning best through lectures and discussions. The remaining 20 percent are kinesthetic learners, who learn best by doing, experiencing, or feeling. Storytelling has aspects that work for all three types. Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.

Stories stick Storytelling also helps with learning because stories are easy to remember. Organizational psychologist Peg Neuhauser found that learning which stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and for far longer, than learning derived from facts and figures. Similarly, psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research suggest that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.

Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof and Story Smart, considers storytelling serious business for business. He has written:

Your goal in every communication is to influence your target audience (change their current attitudes, belief, knowledge, and behavior). Information alone rarely changes any of these. Research confirms that well-designed stories are the most effective vehicle for exerting influence.

Stories about professional mistakes and what leaders learned from them  are another great avenue for learning. Because people identify so closely with stories, imagining how they would have acted in similar circumstances, they’re able to work through situations in a way that’s risk free. The extra benefit for leaders: with a simple personal story they’ve conveyed underlying values, offered insight into the evolution of their own experience and knowledge, presented themselves as more approachable, AND most likely inspired others to want to know more.

Connection. Engagement. Appealing to all sorts of learners. Risk-free learning. Inspiring motivation. Conveying learning that sticks. It’s no wonder that more and more organizations are embracing storytelling as an effective way for their leaders to influence, inspire, and teach.

Read more about the power of storytelling in our brief, “ Telling Stories: How Leaders Can Influence, Teach, and Inspire ”

Vanessa Boris is Senior Manager, Video Solutions at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at  [email protected]

Let’s talk

Change isn’t easy, but we can help. Together we’ll create informed and inspired leaders ready to shape the future of your business.

© 2024 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

• Privacy Policy
• Copyright Information
• Terms of Use
• About Harvard Business Publishing
• Higher Education
• Harvard Business Review
• Harvard Business School

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

Cookie and Privacy Settings

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

The turning point: Why we must transform education now

Global warming. Accelerated digital revolution. Growing inequalities. Democratic backsliding. Loss of biodiversity. Devastating pandemics. And the list goes on. These are just some of the most pressing challenges that we are facing today in our interconnected world.

The diagnosis is clear: Our current global education system is failing to address these alarming challenges and provide quality learning for everyone throughout life. We know that education today is not fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. These findings were detailed in UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report in November 2021 which called for a new social contract for education.

That is why it has never been more crucial to reimagine the way we learn, what we learn and how we learn. The turning point is now. It’s time to transform education. How do we make that happen?

Here’s what you need to know. 

Why do we need to transform education?

The current state of the world calls for a major transformation in education to repair past injustices and enhance our capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future. We must ensure the right to lifelong learning by providing all learners - of all ages in all contexts - the knowledge and skills they need to realize their full potential and live with dignity. Education can no longer be limited to a single period of one’s lifetime. Everyone, starting with the most marginalized and disadvantaged in our societies, must be entitled to learning opportunities throughout life both for employment and personal agency. A new social contract for education must unite us around collective endeavours and provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape a better world anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.  

What are the key areas that need to be transformed?

• Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools

Education is in crisis. High rates of poverty, exclusion and gender inequality continue to hold millions back from learning. Moreover, COVID-19 further exposed the inequities in education access and quality, and violence, armed conflict, disasters and reversal of women’s rights have increased insecurity. Inclusive, transformative education must ensure that all learners have unhindered access to and participation in education, that they are safe and healthy, free from violence and discrimination, and are supported with comprehensive care services within school settings. Transforming education requires a significant increase in investment in quality education, a strong foundation in comprehensive early childhood development and education, and must be underpinned by strong political commitment, sound planning, and a robust evidence base.

• Learning and skills for life, work and sustainable development

There is a crisis in foundational learning, of literacy and numeracy skills among young learners. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text. Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills compared to their peers. More than 771 million people still lack basic literacy skills, two-thirds of whom are women. Transforming education means empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to be resilient, adaptable and prepared for the uncertain future while contributing to human and planetary well-being and sustainable development. To do so, there must be emphasis on foundational learning for basic literacy and numeracy; education for sustainable development, which encompasses environmental and climate change education; and skills for employment and entrepreneurship.

• Teachers, teaching and the teaching profession

Teachers are essential for achieving learning outcomes, and for achieving SDG 4 and the transformation of education. But teachers and education personnel are confronted by four major challenges: Teacher shortages; lack of professional development opportunities; low status and working conditions; and lack of capacity to develop teacher leadership, autonomy and innovation. Accelerating progress toward SDG 4 and transforming education require that there is an adequate number of teachers to meet learners’ needs, and all education personnel are trained, motivated, and supported. This can only be possible when education is adequately funded, and policies recognize and support the teaching profession, to improve their status and working conditions.

• Digital learning and transformation

The COVID-19 crisis drove unprecedented innovations in remote learning through harnessing digital technologies. At the same time, the digital divide excluded many from learning, with nearly one-third of school-age children (463 million) without access to distance learning. These inequities in access meant some groups, such as young women and girls, were left out of learning opportunities. Digital transformation requires harnessing technology as part of larger systemic efforts to transform education, making it more inclusive, equitable, effective, relevant, and sustainable. Investments and action in digital learning should be guided by the three core principles: Center the most marginalized; Free, high-quality digital education content; and Pedagogical innovation and change.

• Financing of education

While global education spending has grown overall, it has been thwarted by high population growth, the surmounting costs of managing education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of aid to other emergencies, leaving a massive global education financial gap amounting to US$ 148 billion annually. In this context, the first step toward transformation is to urge funders to redirect resources back to education to close the funding gap. Following that, countries must have significantly increased and sustainable financing for achieving SDG 4 and that these resources must be equitably and effectively allocated and monitored. Addressing the gaps in education financing requires policy actions in three key areas: Mobilizing more resources, especially domestic; increasing efficiency and equity of allocations and expenditures; and improving education financing data. Finally, determining which areas needs to be financed, and how, will be informed by recommendations from each of the other four action tracks .

What is the Transforming Education Summit?

UNESCO is hosting the Transforming Education Pre-Summit on 28-30 June 2022, a meeting of  over 140 Ministers of Education, as well as  policy and business leaders and youth activists, who are coming together to build a roadmap to transform education globally. This meeting is a precursor to the Transforming Education Summit to be held on 19 September 2022 at the UN General Assembly in New York. This high-level summit is convened by the UN Secretary General to radically change our approach to education systems. Focusing on 5 key areas of transformation, the meeting seeks to mobilize political ambition, action, solutions and solidarity to transform education: to take stock of efforts to recover pandemic-related learning losses; to reimagine education systems for the world of today and tomorrow; and to revitalize national and global efforts to achieve SDG-4.

• More on the Transforming Education Summit
• More on the Pre-Summit

Related items

• Future of education
• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

More on this subject

Other recent news

The end of the year is near, so it's time to look back over the past 12 months and (re) discover 17 of the best stories on how education can make a difference.

The end of the year is near, so it's time to look back over the past 12 months and review the progress achieved in GPE partner countries.

With numbers such as " 617 million children and youth in school but not learning " or " 264 million children still out of school ", it's easy to lose sight of the remarkable efforts that governments, civil society and development partners are making, and which in turn are making a difference in the lives of millions of children .

Despite huge challenges due to conflict, natural disasters or pandemics, the following countries are plowing ahead to keep education systems going or rebuild them:

12-year-old Zinah lives in Soanafindra, a village in the region of Antananarivo, Madagascar. In 2012, a tornado destroyed her school. Thanks to the support of GPE, she is now back in school.

The Ebola virus that struck Liberia in 2014-2015 left more than 4,800 dead and thousands more were affected. In this video you will meet Miatta, Bendu, Elizabeth and Fazam who share their stories on how they are coping after the Ebola crisis.

The GPE Focal Point at the Ministry of Education in Chad writes about how accelerated funding and support for refugee and displaced populations in the Lake Chad region has made a difference

Despite a humanitarian crisis and an economy in tailspin, about 90% of Yemen's schools are open, with the government trying to continue the education of over 5 million children and youth, 73% of the student population. Against the odds, communities are trying their best to keep schools going to prevent the school system from collapsing.

A solid education system is the basis for better learning. The following are stories about countries strengthening their systems through better management, monitoring, infrastructure, materials and support to teachers:

The town of Ghindae in Eritrea has only one school with 690 students, 7 teachers and 5 dilapidated classrooms. Thanks to GPE's support, old classrooms are being replaced, new textbooks have been provided and teachers have been trained. The GPE grant is providing similar support to 80 school communities in four districts, which has resulted in the reduction of the number of out-of-school children in the country.

Thanks to a program funded by GPE and DfID, Zambia' Ministry of General Education now has a strengthened monitoring and evaluation system that will help improve learning and accountability.

Supported by a GPE grant, the Sindh school monitoring system is the first digital system in the education sector in Pakistan that allows transparent and effective monitoring of staff, students and school infrastructure.

Several countries have made specific efforts to reach the youngest learners, to prepare them to succeed later in school.

Through the Early Child Education project, financed by GPE, 100 formal schools and community-based preschools have opened in Cambodia, benefiting more than 125,000 students aged 3-5 years old.

Through community preschools opened in communities around the island, the government of Zanzibar has almost doubled enrollments in early childhood education. In its new 5-year sector strategy, Zanzibar wants to expand access to quality preschool even more.

In Nicaragua, newly constructed preschools combined with new learning materials and improved teacher training have created a stimulating atmosphere for children, teachers, directors, and parents alike.

One could argue that GPE's most valuable contribution is its role as convener of all education stakeholders in support of a country's own priorities. GPE also acts as a knowledge broker of experiences and good practices. The following examples show how this works:

Impressions from GPE CEO Alice Albright after her visit to Honduras where the new 2017-2030 education sector plan was presented to partners. The education plan is the result of a collaborative journey of multiple consultations and workshops, gatherings more than 36 institutions to discuss education policies, technical issues and build consensus on the development of the education system.

A workshop led by the ministry of education of Sierra Leone gives education partners the space to discuss progress and challenges and help the country move forward from the Ebola crisis

At the invitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, education ministry officials from Chad and Madagascar traveled to Kinshasa to participate in DRC's education joint sector review, learn and share their experiences, which they will then use in their own national processes to monitor the sector.

We took a look at how to support the most important actors in the education chain: teachers.

In Niger, many students are confronted with learning in a language that is different from their mother tongue. A US$84.2 million grant from GPE is helping Niger improve the quality of teaching and learning by developing textbooks and teacher guides in three local languages, reviewing the curriculum, and providing pre-service and in-service training for teachers.

With support from a US$88.4 million grant from GPE, Kenya has developed a new Teacher Performance Appraisal Development tool, which allows to monitor teachers' attendance and syllabus coverage, but also their classroom performance, professional knowledge, and innovation and creativity. And finally, one of the key goals of SDG 4 and GPE 2020 is to make education equitable and inclusive for all children, no matter their circumstances. This includes girls and children with disabilities.

And finally, one of the key goals of SDG 4 and GPE 2020 is to make education equitable and inclusive for all children, no matter their circumstances. This includes girls and children with disabilities.

Suwaiba Yunusa, 29, is the only female teacher at Janbulo Islamiyya Primary School located in Roni, Jigawa State, in Nigeria. In addition to teaching, she is an important role model to her female students.

GPE and other partners supported Cambodia's Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to conduct a pilot project on low vision. The project highlights how the health and education sectors can work together to achieve better learning outcomes for children.

Read more results stories

Related blogs

December 01, 2023 by Global Coalition for Foundational Learning The importance of SDG 4.1.1a for foundational learning SDG 4.1.1a measures the proportion of children and young people in grades 2 and 3 achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics. The Global Coalition for Foundational Learning ask...

July 31, 2023 by Simon King , and Amber Gove Why scaling "what works" usually doesn't work for foundational literacy programs Data on foundational learning programs that obtain the best results don't give a complete picture that explains their success. Applying a behavioral science lens sheds light on what makes the difference. ...

June 20, 2023 by Anna-Maria Tammi , and Meredith Lee Bouvier 5 examples of GPE support to refugee education The sharp increase in the number of refugees around the world makes it even more urgent to ensure that education opportunities are available to refugee children. GPE works with partner countries and other...

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.

• Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
• No HTML tags allowed.
• Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
• Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

Free end-of-year letter templates to your students 📝!

55 Best Short Stories for High School Students

Quick and engaging.

If there is one thing that my students and I share, it is our love for short stories for high school. They may not choose to read short stories on their own time, but they get very excited when the story I choose to teach a concept is short . I find that because they are short stories, they pack a stronger emotional punch. Short stories for high school elicit real reactions, especially if the author manages to surprise them. Short stories for high school are the thing I use most often to teach literary devices, act as mentor text for our writing, and get students excited about reading. Here is a collection of 55 short stories for high school students. 

1. “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl

“‘i’ll fix some supper,’ she whispered. when she walked across the room, she couldn’t feel her feet touching the floor. she couldn’t feel anything except a slight sickness. she did everything without thinking. she went downstairs to the freezer and took hold of the first object she found. she lifted it out, and looked at it. it was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at again—a leg of lamb..

Why I love it: The dramatic irony. The discussion that follows: Who is the innocent lamb in this story?

2. “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

“the world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the huntees.”.

Why I love it: This is one of those short stories for high school that engages all of my students. I love to ask them what they think the most dangerous game in the world is. I like to watch them figure out what is about to happen as we read through the story.

3. “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl

“‘i stuff all my little pets myself when they pass away. will you have another cup of tea’”.

Why I love it: This story is great for suspense, irony, and characterization. It always creeps students out.

4. “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury

“i think the sun is a flower / that blooms for just one hour.”.

Why I love it: This story is heartbreaking and truth-telling. Bradbury takes us to Venus and uses the setting to drive the conflict and focus on the character’s behavior.

5. “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury

“too much of anything isn’t good for anyone.”.

Why I love it: It’s a dystopian story about the power of technology in our lives. It’s easy to connect to students’ lives.

6. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

“there’s always been a lottery.”.

Why I love it: The brutality of this story sneaks up on you. For a while, you’re convinced this town is ordinary until you find out the dark consequences of blindly following tradition.

7. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe

“it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.”.

Why I love it: My students love a murder mystery. This one is made even more alluring while the narrator tries to convince the readers of his sanity.

8. “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

“the james dillingham youngs were very proud of two things which they owned. one thing was jim’s gold watch. … the other thing was della’s hair.”.

Why I love it: It’s one of the best stories for high school to teach irony during the holiday season.

9. “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs

“never mind, dear,” said his wife soothingly; perhaps you’ll win the next one.”.

Why I love it: One of the classic short stories for high school about what can go wrong when granted three wishes. Students also love to know that there was a Simpsons episode based on this short story.

10. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber

“the district attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. ‘have you ever seen this before’ walter mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. ‘this is my webley-vickers 50.80,’ he said calmly. an excited buzz ran around the courtroom.”.

Why I love it: This story moves from the ordinary to the extraordinary. It highlights the mundane adult life while the main character escapes to fantastical situations, inspired by his surroundings. Bonus: the movie version that was released in 2013.

11. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin

“this is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”.

Why I love it: This story encourages high school students to consider the cost of happiness.

12. “Araby” by James Joyce

“her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which i myself did not understand. my eyes were often full of tears (i could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. i thought little of the future. i did not know whether i would ever speak to her or not or, if i spoke to her, how i could tell her of my confused adoration.”.

Why I love it: It’s about growing up and developing a crush that is all-consuming.

13. “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

“it fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across time. eckels’ mind whirled. it couldn’t change things. killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important could it”.

Why I love it: It’s a short story about the butterfly effect. The plot asks the question many have asked before, if we could travel back in time, how would it change the future?

14. “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan

“my mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in america.”.

Why I love it: It explores the complex mother-daughter relationship.

15. “Rules of the Game” by Amy Tan

“next time win more, lose less.”.

Why I love it: Use this for an example of extended metaphor and, again, the dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship.

16. “Eraser Tattoo” by Jason Reynolds

“he knew the sting wouldn’t last forever. but the scar would.”.

Why I love it: I love a teenage love story. Focus on the symbolism of the eraser tattoo.

17. “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst

“all of us must have something or someone to be proud of.”.

Why I love it: A beautifully written heartbreaking story about brothers.

18. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” Flannery O’Connor

“‘it isn’t a soul in this green world of god’s that you can trust,’ she said. ‘and i don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody,’ she repeated, looking at red sammy.”.

Why I love it: It’s a great story for studying characters, their flaws, and their transformation by the end of the story.

19. “Ruthless” by William de Mille

“when it comes to protecting my property, i make my own laws.”.

Why I love it: It’s a tale of revenge with unexpected twists and turns.

20. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

“when the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.”.

Why I love it: It makes you ponder the question: Can a person die of a broken heart?

21. “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros

“what they don’t understand about birthdays, and what they’ll never tell you, is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.”.

Why I love it: I use this when I teach creative writing. What changes when we turn 11? How are we different from when we were 10? Most agree that it is a significant change.

22. “The Test” by Theodore Thomas

“nobody should want to drive a car after going through what you just went through.”.

Why I love it: Your students will not see the ending coming.

23. “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury

“and one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry … until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.”.

Why I love it: Use this futuristic story to teach setting, foreshadowing, and theme.

24. “The Schoolmistress” by Anton Chekhov

“‘it is beyond all understanding,’ she thought, ‘why god gives beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet eyes to weak, unlucky, useless people—why they are so charming.’”.

Why I love it: We get to see simple moments become symbols for larger happenings in her life.

25. “Lob’s Girl” by Joan Aiken

“some people choose their dogs, and some dogs choose their people.”.

Why I love it: Read it for a tale of friendship paired with elements of suspense.

26. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce

“he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment.”.

Why I love it: The ending will shock your students.

27. “The Chaser” by John Collier

“‘she will want to know all you do,’ said the old man. ‘all that has happened to you during the day. every word of it. she will want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad.’”.

Why I love it: For the discussion afterward, what would you be willing to do for love? Bonus: Pair with a Twilight Zone episode.

28. “The Janitor in Space” by Amber Sparks

“she feels at home beyond the skies. she lied and said she came here to be close to god, but she feels further away from him than ever.”.

Why I love it: The creative plot created in this story launches deep discussion after reading.

29. “Standard Loneliness Package” by Charles Yu

“root canal is one fifty, give or take, depending on who’s doing it to you. a migraine is two hundred.”.

Why I love it: The plot is intriguing enough for students to be invested. Imagine a world where you outsource negative feelings and experiences to other people.

30. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“i cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.”.

Why I love it: I still remember the first time I read this story in high school and the discussion about women and mental health and the symbolism throughout the story.

31. “ A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell

“oh, well,” said mrs. hale’s husband, with good-natured superiority, “women are used to worrying over trifles.”.

Why I love it: It’s a story about women being misunderstood and underestimated.

32. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

“‘the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. i shall not die of a cough.’ ‘true—true,’ i replied.”.

Why I love it: It’s a revenge story that allows students to see examples of irony throughout.

33. “To Build a Fire” by Jack London

“he now received the full force of the cold. the blood of his body drew back from it. the blood was alive, like the dog.”.

Why I love it: This story is great for any adventurous soul.

34. “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty

“[the sniper’s eyes] were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.”.

Why I love it: It’s a story that illustrates the pain and loss of war.

35. “The Lady or the Tiger?” by Frank Stockton

“it mattered not that he might already possess a wife and family, or that his affections might be engaged upon an object of his own selection; the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of retribution and reward.”.

Why I love it: Use this as a short story that illustrates that actions have consequences.

36. “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe

“yet, mad i am not—and very surely do i not dream.”.

Why I love it: This is one of the classic Poe short stories for high school about madness.

37. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain

“smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ‘most anything’—and i believe him.”.

Why I love it: A Mark Twain story about a man who bets on anything. Use this next time a student says “Bet!” to you.

38. “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka

“one morning, when gregor samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”.

Why I love it: Read this story for symbolism, as the main character turns into an insect overnight. It’s an excellent story that illustrates alienation and loneliness.

39. “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

“depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. now are ye undeceived. evil is the nature of mankind.”.

Why I love it: A great read for American literature that explores the nature of humanity and questions of faith.

40. “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing

“they were of that coast; all of them were burned smooth dark brown and speaking a language he did not understand. to be with them, of them, was a craving that filled his whole body.”.

Why I love it: The story focuses on overcoming limitations while an 11-year-old trains to swim through an underwater hole in a rock.

41. “The Ice Palace” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“up in her bedroom window sally carrol happer rested her nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched clark darrow’s ancient ford turn the corner.”.

Why I love it: Fitzgerald was gifted in writing about tension in love. This story is about the tension between lovers from the North and South. Read it for the story and the poetic language of Fitzgerald.

42. “The Purple Jar” by Maria Edgeworth

“‘oh mother, how happy i should be,’ said she, as she passed a toy-shop, ‘if i had all these pretty things’”.

Why I love it: It’s a simple story of the conflict between what we desire versus what we need.

43. “Birthday Party” by Katharine Brush

“there was nothing conspicuous about them, nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of their meal, when it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion—in fact, the husband’s birthday, and the wife had planned a little surprise for him.”.

Why I love it: This is a very quick read and still manages to pack a punch.

44. “Thank You, Ma’am” by Langston Hughes

“you ought to be my son. i would teach you right from wrong.”.

Why I love it: The story is relatable and sends an important message.

45. “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

“this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely.”.

Why I love it: It’s a message from a mother to a daughter on how to behave.

46. “Powder” by Tobias Wolff

“my father was driving. my father in his forty-eighth year, rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honor, flushed with certainty. he was a great driver.”.

Why I love it: This is one of the great short stories for high school that explores the complexity of a father-son relationship.

47. “The Pie” by Gary Soto

“once, at the german market, i stood before a rack of pies, my sweet tooth gleaming and the juice of guilt wetting my underarms. i nearly wept.”.

Why I love it: This is one of the best short stories for high school about the strength and power of guilt in the presence of childhood and into an adulthood.

48. “Sticks” by George Saunders

“the pole was dad’s only concession to glee.”.

Why I love it: This super-short story is about a father’s tradition of decorating a pole in the yard and all that the pole represents.

49. “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier

“for one does not have to be ignorant and poor to find that one’s life is barren as the dusty yards of our town.”.

Why I love it: This is a story about realizing that we’re growing up. This is one of the great short stories for high school students that they can connect to.

50. “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury

“the multicolored or grey lights touching their faces, but never really touching them …”.

Why I love it: This story takes place in 2053. Ray Bradbury has a way of making the future feel like the present. Bradbury reminds us how important it is to not lose our humanity.

51. “The Stolen Party” by Liliana Heker

“she was so pleased with the compliment that a while later, when her mother came to fetch her, that was the first thing she told her.”.

Why I love it: This story lets us view a party through a child’s eyes and a mother’s desire to protect her daughter’s heart. 

52. “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing

“he would do it if it killed him, he said defiantly to himself.”.

Why I love it: This is a story that is rich in symbolism and beautifully illustrates the transition from childhood to adulthood. 

53. “The Wretched and the Beautiful” by E. Lily Yu

“‘come out where we can see you,’ the policeman said. the rest of us were glad that someone confident and capable, someone who was not us, was handling the matter.”.

Why I love it: While this story involves aliens, it asks readers to think about what it means to be human. There is also great symbolism in this story.

54. “Cooking Time” by Anita Roy

“at that moment, all i felt was angry. i’d always known that mandy’s obsession would get us into trouble. but would she listen never.”.

Why I love it: This is a story that is set in a dystopian future where the food has been replaced by a supplement. It’s a unique take on a dystopian world as it involves a cooking show and trying to change the way the world operates.

55. “ He — Y, Come On Ou — t! ” by Shinichi Hoshi, translated by Stanleigh Jones

“whatever one wished to discard, the hole accepted it all. the hole cleansed the city of its filth. …”.

Why I love it: This is a story about a Japanese village discovering a mysterious hole and illustrates what happens when people behave selfishly.

Did you enjoy these short stories for high school students? Check out this list of Our All-Time Favorite Classroom Quotes .

Want more articles like this be sure to subscribe to our newsletters .

You Might Also Like

18+ Best Funny Short Stories To Teach in Middle and High School

These stories will get them giggling ... and learning too! Continue Reading

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. 5335 Gate Parkway, Jacksonville, FL 32256

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

AM INSPIRED

Funny, Motivational & Inspirational Story Collection..

• Home »
• Inspirational Stories
• Motivational stories
• Online Business
• Funny Jokes
• Funny Short Stories
• Short Stories

Subscribe via email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

• Funny Jokes (5)
• Funny Short Stories (7)
• Inspirational Stories (33)
• Mothers Love (4)
• Motivational stories (29)
• Other Stories (4)
• Quotes Collection (2)
• Religious (4)
• Short Stories (2)
• Study Tips (6)
• True Stories (14)

Home » True Stories » The Importance of Education - Touching Story

Monday, June 3, 2013

• The Importance of Education - Touching Story

4 comments:

This story is really great. It explained the importance of education to us. With all the current education issues , this will surely be a big change of pace.

U are right michelle

Hello, I will include this story in my speech about the value of education. THank you for this wonderful story!

Post a Comment

Popular posts.

Total Pageviews

Blog archive.

• Honey, What's for Dinner
• Funny Interview..
• Living a Life called soldier"s Wife
• Heart Touching Inspirational Story
• THE COLOURS OF FRIENDSHIP
• Amazing True Love Story
• Never Take Love For Granted ( Beautiful Story )
• Don't overreact in every situation!
• My First Day in School..
• Very Very Funny.. Must Read
• Unexpected Twist.. Very Funny
• Man & Girl - Very Very Funny Conversation
• Never Try to Abuse or Ignore you Parents
• 101 Reasons Why I LOVE YOU
• Be Willing To Learn Throughout The Life
• Her Father Donated His Heart
• Heart Touching True Love Story.. Must Read and Share
• THE 9-YEAR-OLD INDIAN TAKES AMERICA BY SURPRISE!
• Married or Not You Should Read This...
• You & God.. Awesome & Best Conversation Ever In Th...
• Learn from Mistakes
• Funny Mental's.. ha ha ha
• An Inspirational Story of Two Frogs in the Milk - ...
• Face difficulties positively
• Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder
• The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget
• Military Story: True Friend
• Military Story: The Marine’s Father
• Note Taking Techniques, Tips and Strategies
• Concentration Tips
• How God Saved This Little Girl During Her Father's...
• ►  May (27)
• ►  April (2)
• ►  March (2)
• ►  February (7)
• ►  January (3)
• ►  December (7)
• ►  November (1)

Quotes For You

Beginning today I am responsible for my own happiness and I will do things that make me happy . . . admire the beautiful wonders of nature, listen to my favorite music, pet a kitten or a puppy, soak in a bubble bath . . . pleasure can be found in the most simple of gestures.

Beginning today I will learn something new; I will try something different; I will savor all the various flavors life has to offer. I will change what I can and the rest I will let go. I will strive to become the best me I can possibly be.

Social Connet

Barack Obama

None of us wants to see any fraud or waste in government spending, ... But nowhere should we be more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt than with the brave men and women who served our country.

The encouraging thing is that in the aftermath of this fiasco everybody is outraged and the generosity of white suburban Republicans as well as black liberal Democrats indicates that the country wants better from its government and wants better from its politics, ... The burden is on us as Democrats, the burden is on me as a U.S. senator to help bridge that gap.

Teaching Short Stories in The Secondary Classroom

They might be short, but they sure are powerful teaching tools! This post outlines all the reasons why you should be teaching short stories in the secondary classroom, including some of my tips for teaching them and advice for selecting the right one.

I absolutely love teaching short stories. I mean, what can’t you teach with short stories? From character and plot to author’s craft and literary devices, there’s so much to do with these small yet mighty pieces of literature.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that time is especially fleeting in my classroom. And don’t even get me started on the challenge of engaging students with equally fleeting attention spans. Thankfully, short stories come to the rescue. I’ve found that short stories are able to pack a punch and keep students engaged without taking weeks or months to get through. Additionally, with so many to choose from, you’re bound to find the right short story to fit your learning goals and students’ needs. 

With that said, why wouldn’t you incorporate short stories into your classroom? (Beats me!) But this post is filled with reasons why you should .

The Benefits of Teaching Short Stories

1. They’re well… short.

The compact nature of short stories means exposing students to strong literary pieces without the time it takes to read an entire novel. Nothing against novels, but short stories are far less daunting for students than several hundred pages – especially if the student is a struggling or reluctant reader. Break up short stories into manageable chunks or even read them together in one or two classes! Regardless of how the student feels about reading, the shorter nature of these stories means more time analyzing the words on the page, not just reading them.

2. They enhance critical and analytical thinking skills.

Thanks to their short length, students won’t have to spend as much effort keeping track of characters and plotlines that span over hundreds of pages. Instead, they can focus on honing their higher level thinking skills. They can make meaning and inference. They can draw conclusions and make connections. Oh, and that’s not all. As students improve their critical and analytical thinking skills with short stories, they’ll be building up their confidence and stamina for when you introduce longer, denser literary works.

3. They’re an easy way to change it up.

With so much to teach and so little time, it’s easy to stick to what you know. However, so many courses are led by outdated curriculum using the same old literary canon year after year. Short stories are a simple way to toss in new perspectives, authors, literary movements, and genres. If you know you need to teach a list of required classics, short stories are a great way to keep things relevant and spice it up in between longer texts.

4. They make for great replacement texts when needed.

This is especially true if you’re teaching a mixed-ability class or are running out of time to fit everything in. If you’re short on time or have struggling readers and need a different approach, replace a novel study with a short story or two that captures the same learning goals. For example, Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” can be taught in conjunction with or as a replacement for his highly esteemed The Great Gatsby . If you’re looking to dive into dystopia but can’t quite fit in Fahrenheit 451 , Ray Bradbury has plenty of short stories that fit the bill.

5. They can foster engagement AND build a classroom community. 

Let’s face it – sometimes students lose steam over the course of a longer text, like a novel. However, with a short story, students are able to dive in and commit to the characters and plot. They can focus on the symbolism and underlying messages or commentary. Therefore, it can lead to some highly engaging discussions. (Just read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” or Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” and you’ll see what I mean.)

6.  They make complex texts and skills seem more manageable.

Not all short stories are easy stories to read. In fact, some of them are surprisingly complex. However, it’s important that as students progress through their secondary education, they encounter increasingly difficult texts and continue to learn higher-level skills, right? Thankfully, it’s far less intimidating to work through several pages of dense text than to struggle through several chapters . 

7. They are perfect for text-to-text comparisons.

Looking for students to compare texts? Chances are, they’ll forget the first novel by the time they finish the second. However, short stories allow for easier comparisons. You can read short stories back to back to compare and contrast or to build upon meaning and increase understanding.

8. They’re a perfect way to differentiate (and scaffold) learning.

As much as I love reading groups, it can be a challenge to manage several groups of vastly different abilities. Thankfully, teaching short stories is a great way to differentiate learning. If your students fall into two or more ability levels, consider modeling the skills with an introductory story that you read as a class. Then, break the students up into more ability-appropriate stories that they can work through together before completing an independent assessment.

Teaching Short Stories: When and How?

While you can certainly teach an entire short story unit, that’s not the only way to incorporate them into the classroom. Here are a few of my other favorite ways:

• Introducing new authors, literary movements, genres, or themes
• Providing historical, social, or literary context
• Supplementing a longer text or novel study
• Teaching the essential elements of fiction
• Enhancing and practicing critical thinking skills through literary analysis
• Comparing two or more texts
• Exposing students to more challenging texts
• Differentiating texts among mixed-ability students

Regardless when and how you plan on teaching short stories in your classroom, these texts are engaging, approachable, and versatile. Therefore, you can teach them however works best for you and your students.

Tips for Teaching Short Stories

We’ve already established that, despite their length, short stories are full of learning opportunities. However, that can be a bit overwhelming for teachers and students alike. Here are some tips to ensure you are getting the most out of teaching short stories:

1. Set a purpose. Know why you’re reading the short story. That includes having identified related standards or competencies as well as establishing the desired learning goals. This will help both you and your students stay focused once you dive in.

2. Stay focused. To avoid overwhelming students, stay focused on your main goal. Otherwise, you risk turning students off by “over analyzing” a text. Instead of over doing it, spend your time diving deeply into one or a few specific aspects and really honing those skills.

3. Encourage rereading. With short stories, this isn’t such a big ask. Consider assigning the short story for homework and then rereading it with a clearer purpose in class. The first read is for comprehension. Second reading is for inferring and evaluating. You’d be surprised by just how much students can get out of this approach.

4. Scaffold the analysis. There can be a lot to unpack in just a handful of pages. However, thanks to their comparatively short length, you can take your time scaffolding the analysis. Begin with a teacher-led read-through, stopping to point out important aspects of the text. Then, you have students work in small groups to begin unpacking the meaning. Finally, assign students a form of independent analysis through questions, writing, or a more creative assessment .

5. Make real-world connections. With novels, especially some of the more dense ones in the classic literary canon, students become so caught up in unpacking long, complex texts that it leaves very little room for discussions about anything else. However, I believe there is magic to be had when students can connect literature to the world around them. Just because short stories take less time to read doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to discuss.

Choosing Which Short Stories to Teach

The good news is that there are tons of short stories to choose from. That means you’ll be able to find a short story that works for just about any purpose. However, when it comes to selecting the best short stories for your high school students, I suggest doing the following:

• Preview the story for content, language, and difficulty
• Think about how engaging the story will be for your students
• Look for connections to other texts and/or modern day
• Consider how the story fits into your curriculum
• Match the story to a standard, competency, or learning goal

As much as I love just how many great short stories exist out there, I know that can also make selecting ones to share with your students a daunting task. Teaching high school? Consider starting with this list of the best short stories for high school students or this list of 20 short stories written by female authors . If you’re looking for short story suggestions for middle school, check out my list of the best short stories for middle schoolers .

When it comes to literature, I believe in quality not quantity! Yes, that means diving deeply into one novel over dipping our toes into three. However, it also means that you don’t have to read hundreds of pages to experience literary greatness – or, let’s be real, achieve learning goals. A high-quality short story can really pack a punch.

While they might appear simple on the surface, dig a little deeper and you’ll find them jam-packed with rich meaning, powerful prose, and teachable moments. Teaching short stories is an engaging and effective way to dive into literature with your students.  They are perfect for text-to-text comparisons and springboards for lively classroom discussions. They make for great supplemental or anchor texts. They can be used for mini lessons or make up an entire unit of their own.

Long story short – see what I did there – don’t let their limited word count fool you.

Happy teaching!

2 thoughts on “Teaching Short Stories in The Secondary Classroom”

Such a refreshing look at teaching short stories: informative and interesting!!!

Thank you Teaching ELA students grade 9-12, but within each group the reading range sometimes leaves me at odds on how to fairly teach and not cheat any of my students, to have each come through with the same level of excellence, however, your advice is great and I will “never surrender, never give up! Vivre le short story!!!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Kids Stories

Search this blog, stories for kids - importance of education.

Post a Comment

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

43 of the Most Iconic Short Stories in the English Language

From washington irving to kristen roupenian.

Last year, I put together this list of the most iconic poems in the English language ; it’s high time to do the same for short stories. But before we go any further, you may be asking: What does “iconic” mean in this context? Can a short story really be iconic in the way of a poem, or a painting, or Elvis?

Well, who knows, but for our purposes, “iconic” means that the story has somehow wormed its way into the general cultural consciousness—a list of the best short stories in the English language would look quite different than the one below. (Also NB that in this case we’re necessarily talking about the American cultural consciousness, weird and wiggly as it is.) When something is iconic, it is a highly recognizable cultural artifact that can be used as a shorthand—which often means it has been referenced in other forms of media. You know, just like Elvis. (So for those of you heading to the comments to complain that these stories are “the usual suspects”—well, exactly.) An iconic short story may be frequently anthologized , which usually means frequently read in classrooms, something that can lead to cultural ubiquity—but interestingly, the correlation isn’t perfect. For instance, Joyce’s “Araby” is anthologized more often, but for my money “The Dead” is more iconic . Film adaptations and catchy, reworkable titles help. But in the end, for better or for worse, you know it when you see it. Which means that, like anything else, it all depends on your point of view—icon status is (like most of the ways we evaluate art) highly subjective.

So, having acknowledged that there’s no real way to make this list, but because this is what we’re all here to do, here are some of the most iconic short stories for American readers in the English language—and a few more that deserve to be more iconic than they are.

Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) I agonized over whether I should pick “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Irving’s oeuvre. Both have many, many adaptations to their name and are so ubiquitous as to have drifted into the folklore realm. The latter certainly has more memorable recent adaptations, but the former  is the only one with a bridge named after it . Ah, screw it, we’ll count them both.

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) Poe’s early stream-of-consciousness horror story, unreliable narrator and heart beating under the floorboards and all, is certainly one of the most adapted—and even more often referenced —short stories in popular culture, and which may or may not be the source for all of the hundreds of stories in which a character is tormented by a sound only they can hear. (Still not quite as ubiquitous as Poe himself , though . . .)

Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) Once, while I was walking in Brooklyn, carrying my Bartleby tote bag , a woman in an SUV pulled over (on Atlantic Avenue, folks) to excitedly wave at me and yell “Melville! That’s Melville!” Which is all you really need to know about that .

Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) I will leave it to Kurt Vonnegut, who famously wrote , “I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce. It isn’t remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like “Sophisticated Lady” by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) Odds are this was the first overtly Feminist text you ever read, at least if you’re of a certain age; it’s become a stand-in for the idea of women being driven insane by the patriarchy—and being ignored by doctors, who deem them “hysterical.” This is another one with lots of adaptations to its name, including a memorable episode of The Twilight Zone , which concludes: “Next time you’re alone, look quickly at the wallpaper, and the ceiling, and the cracks on the sidewalk. Look for the patterns and lines and faces on the wall. Look, if you can, for Sharon Miles, visible only out of the corner of your eye or… in the Twilight Zone.”

Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw” (1898) Technically a novella, but discussed enough as a story that I’ll include it here (same goes for a couple of others on this list, including “The Metamorphosis”). It has, as a work of literature, inspired a seemingly endless amount of speculation, criticism, unpacking, and stance-taking. “In comment after comment, article after article, the evidence has been sifted through and judgments delivered,” Brad Leithauser wrote in The New Yorker . Fine, intelligent readers have confirmed the validity of the ghosts (Truman Capote); equally fine and intelligent readers have thunderously established the governess’s madness (Edmund Wilson).” And nothing that inspires so much interpretive interest could escape the many interpretations into other media: films, episodes of television, and much other literature.

Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Toy Dog” (1899) Widely acknowledged as one of Chekhov’s best stories, if not  the  best, and therefore almost no students get through their years at school without reading it. Has been adapted as a film, a ballet, a play, a musical, and most importantly, a Joyce Carol Oates short story.

W. W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902) So iconic—be careful what you wish for, is the gist—that you probably didn’t even know it started out as a short story. My favorite version is, of course, the Laurie Anderson song .

O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905) According to Wikipedia, there have been 17 different film adaptations of O. Henry’s classic short story about a couple’s thwarted Christmas; the essential format—Della sells her hair to buy Jim a watch chain; Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs—has been referenced and replicated countless times beyond that. I even heard Dax Shepard refer to this story on his podcast the other day, and so I rest my case.

James Joyce, “The Dead” (1914) The last story in Joyce’s collection  Dubliners and one of the best short stories ever written; just ask anyone who wanted to have read some Joyce but couldn’t crack  Ulysses . (Or anyone who could crack  Ulysses  too.) And let’s not forget the John Huston movie starring Anjelica Huston as Gretta.

Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1915) Everyone has to read this in school, at some point—which is probably the reason why it’s been parodied, referenced, and adapted many times in just about every format . And why not? What could be more universal than the story of the man who wakes up to find himself transformed into an enormous insect?

Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” aka “The Hounds of Zaroff” (1924) “The most popular short story ever written in English” is obviously the one about aristocrats hunting people. Widely adapted , but one of my favorite versions is the episode of Dollhouse in which a Richard Connell (no relation except the obvious) hunts Echo with a bow.

Ernest Hemingway, “The Killers” (1927) I was tempted to include “Hills Like White Elephants” because of the number of people forced to read it to learn about dialogue (happily, there are other options ), but “The Killers,” while less often anthologized, is more influential overall, and gave us not only two full length film adaptations and a Tarkovsky short but Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain,” which I do think is a very good story to learn from, if not for dialogue, then for story-making.

Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933) Hurston is most famous for  Their Eyes Were Watching God , but those who know will tell you that this story of love, marriage, betrayal, and love again—which was also made into a 2001 film—is a classic, too.

Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (1948) The short story that launched a thousand letters to  The New Yorker —or if not a thousand , then at least “a torrent . . . the most mail the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction.” Still taught widely in schools, and still chilling.

J. D. Salinger, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948) The very first story to destroy many a young mind. In a good way, obviously.

Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950)

Bradbury’s work has thoroughly permeated pop culture; plenty of his stories are widely adapted and referenced, so I could have chosen a few others here (“The Veldt” is my personal favorite). But every year, the image of a smart house going on long after the death of its occupants becomes more chilling and relevant an image; we can’t help but keep going back to it.

Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds” (1952) I know it’s really the Hitchcock film adaptation that’s iconic, but you wouldn’t have the Hitchcock without the du Maurier.

Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953) Another oft-assigned (and oft-argued-over) story, this one with so many title rip-offs .

Elmore Leonard, “Three-Ten to Yuma” (1953) I know, I know, it’s “Fire in the Hole” that gave us  Justified , and we’re all so very glad. But “Three-Ten to Yuma” has more name recognition—after all, it was adapted into two separate and very good films, the former of which (1957) actually created contemporary slang : in Cuba, Americans are called yumas and the United States is  La Yuma .

Philip K. Dick, “The Minority Report” (1956) As a whole, Philip K. Dick’s work has had massive influence on literature, film, pop culture, and our cultural attitudes toward technology. Most of his best-known works are novels, but when a short story gets made into a Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise film, you’re basically assuring iconic status right there. (Or at least that’s how it used to work…)

James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) Baldwin’s best known short story pops up in plenty of anthologies, and can be thanked for being the gateway drug for many budding Baldwin acolytes.

Alan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1959) Not only is the story itself widely known and read—just ask Rod Blagojevich ( remember him? )—that title has been rewritten and reused thousands of times for varying ends—just ask the reporter who wrote that piece about Blagojevich. Or Adrian Tomine .

John Cheever, “The Swimmer” (1964) Cheever’s most famous story nails something essential about the mid-century American sensibility, and particularly the mid-century American suburbs, which is probably why everyone knows it (it’s also frequently anthologized). Or maybe it’s more about Burt Lancaster’s little shorts ? Either way.

Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966) Another frequently anthologized and unwaveringly excellent short story; and look, it’s no one’s fault that Laura Dern turns everything she touches iconic.

Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson” (1972) Yet another story often assigned in schools (the good ones, anyway), which hopefully means one day we’ll wake up and find out that everyone has read it.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973) As others have pointed out before me , Le Guin’s most read and most famous short story is almost always chillingly relevant.

Donald Barthelme, “The School” (1974) This one might only be iconic for writers, but considering it’s one of the best short stories ever written (according to me), I simply couldn’t exclude it.

Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl” (1978) Another staple of a writer’s education, and a reader’s; “are you really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” being a kind of bandied-about shibboleth.

Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1981) I struggled choosing a Carver story for this list—”Cathedral” is more important, and probably more read, but “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” has transcended its own form more completely, at least with its title, which has spawned a host of echoes, including Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank , to the point that I think it’s recognizable to just about everyone. A quick Google search will reveal that the framing has been used for almost everything you can think of. There’s—and I kid you not—a What We Talk About When We Talk About Books/War/Sex/God/The Tube/Games/Rape/Money/Creative Writing/Nanoclusters/Hebrew/The Weather/Defunding the Police/Free Speech/Taxes/Holes/Climate/The Moon/Waste/Cancel Culture/Impeachment/Gender/Digital Inclusions/Exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease/COVID-19 . You see what I’m getting at here.

Stephen King, “The Body” (1982) Otherwise known, to the general public, as  Stand By Me .

Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” (1983) Want to feel bad about your writing? This was the first short story Amy Hempel ever wrote.

Lorrie Moore, “How to Be an Other Woman” (1985) A very very good short story that has given rise to so many bad ones.

Mary Gaitskill, “Secretary” (1988) Bad Behavior  is iconic as a whole , but probably the story to have most acutely permeated the wider culture is “Secretary,” on account of the film adaptation starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader—despite the fact that it totally butchers the ending.

Amy Tan, “Rules of the Game” (1989) This story originally appeared in The Joy Luck Club , Tan’s mega-bestseller, so probably almost everyone you know has read it. The film version didn’t hurt either.

Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” (1990) Why, it’s only the most anthologized short story of the last 30(ish) years. That’s why even the people you know who haven’t picked up a book in their adult lives have read it.

Denis Johnson, “Emergency” (1992) When I left New York to go get my MFA, a friend gave me a copy of Jesus’ Son with the inscription “Because everyone in your MFA will talk about it and you don’t want to be the girl who hasn’t read it. (It’s also really good).” He was not wrong.

Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” (1997) Everybody knows this story—even if they only know it from its (massively successful and influential, not to mention the true Best Picture Winner of 2006) film adaptation—and not for nothing, coming out when it did, it went a long way towards making some Americans more comfortable with homosexuality. Open the floodgates, baby.

Jhumpa Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter” (1998) The story that made Lahiri a household name.

Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life” (1998) Otherwise known as  Arrival . (Also technically a novella.)

Alice Munro, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (2001) At this point, almost everyone has read at least some  Alice Munro, right? This story is one of the best from one of the greats, and was also adapted into a fantastic but heartbreaking film,  Away From Her .

Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person” (2017) Sure, it’s recent, so it’s not quite as ingrained as some of the others here, but it’s also the story that broke the internet —and quite possibly the only New Yorker  story that thousands of people have ever read.

Finally, as is often the case with lists that summarize the mainstream American literary canon of the last 200 years, it is impossible not to recognize that the list above is much too white and male. So for our future and continuing iconography, your friends at Literary Hub suggest reading the following stories, both new and old:

Eudora Welty, “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941) Clarice Lispector, “The Imitation of the Rose” (1960) Leslie Marmon Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” (1969) Ralph Ellison, “Cadillac Flambé” (1973) Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild” (1984) Bharati Mukherjee, “The Management of Grief” (1988) John Edgar Wideman, “Fever” (1990) Sandra Cisneros, “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991) Christine Schutt, “To Have and to Hold” (1996) ZZ Packer, “Brownies” (2003) Edward P. Jones, “Marie” (2004) Karen Russell, “Haunting Olivia” (2005) Kelly Link, “Stone Animals” (2005) Edwidge Danticat, “Ghosts” (2008) Yiyun Li, “A Man Like Him” (2008) Claire Vaye Watkins, “Ghosts, Cowboys” (2009) Ottessa Moshfegh, “Bettering Myself” (2013) Amelia Gray, “House Heart” (2013) Zadie Smith, “Meet the President!” (2013) Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch” (2014) Diane Cook, “The Way the End of Days Should Be” (2014) Kirstin Valdez Quade, “Five Wounds” (2015) NoViolet Bulawayo, “Shhhh” (2015) Mariana Enriquez, “Spiderweb” (2016) Ken Liu, “State Change” (2016) Helen Oyeyemi, “Sorry Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” (2016) Lesley Nneka Arimah, “What Is a Volcano?” (2017) James McBride, “The Christmas Dance” (2017) Viet Thanh Nguyen, “War Years” (2017) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, “Friday Black” (2018). . .

Honestly, this list could go on forever, but let’s stop and say: more short stories of all kinds in the hands of the general public, please!

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Emily Temple

Previous article, next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Follow us on Twitter

Rebecca Solnit on Twitter Conspiracies, QAnon, and the Case of the Two-Faced Mailboxes

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

login to Club

Bedtime Stories to educate

Kind and joyful kids, the best collection of short bedtime stories, ... stories about every topic ....

stories of Peace 

stories of Respect 

stories of Family 

stories of Love 

stories of Princesses 

stories of Adventures 

stories of Dinosaurs 

stories of Fairies 

stories of Pirates 

stories of Animals 

stories of Caring nature 

stories of Christmas 

stories of Dragons 

stories of tidiness

• funny stories

browse more topics...

Picture stories.

The Full Warren

The Monster in the Wardrobe

The Bad Neighbours

Edward and the Dragon

The Drawing That Talked

Waking Nightmare

Trouble in the Science Class

Boobuan monkeys

The Pleaseometer

Robot with a Virus

view more picture stories...

Short stories with values.

The Magic Tree

Princess of Fire

The Little Christmas Star

George the Giant

The Photographic Elephant

The Lake Princesses

The Ugly Fairy

The Garden of Statues

Scuttleball. Soccer for Ants

The Incompetent Genie

The Last Dinosaurs

An Octopus in Trouble

Tony, the Human Wasp

browse more bedtime stories...

... in varied multimedia formats....

Picture Stories

Animated Stories

Audiostories

Don't forget to try Jakhu Stories, the best bedtime stories app for kids

Let's go beyond entertainment: stories can be the best companion to prepare your kids for a brilliant future. We will help you with a great collection of short and funny stories for kids, and will tell you even how to narrate and create your own. Keep reading to discover a new world of education.

Educate and Have Fun with Short Stories

• Hundreds of short stories for children teaching values
• Audiostories in English and Spanish
• Modern stories with fairytale characters
• Educational resources for Parents and Teachers
• An entry into the world of educational stories

--- looking for a specific story?, select a value    >>>

or use the searchbox at top right

For parents

• Teaching with stories
• Top rated stories
• Newest stories
• Audio stories

For teachers

Don't miss the Workbook of Values , a great selection of short stories with coloring pictures that you can download for free. The best way to enter the world of educational stories.

• Audio stories , for lessons on values
• Stories in Spanish , short and simple, for your language lessons

JOIN US TO EDUCATE WITH STORIES!

Stories have an incredible educational value due to the their influence on memory, but also because... children love them! Our aim is to support and help you with this task. In this site:

• You will find hundred of stories.
• We will help you to teach values.
• You can listen to a thousand audio stories.
• Enjoy time with your children even more.
• You will learn to tell stories.
• We also offer you...
• And create your own.
• ... losts of educational resources .

If you are an education pro, you know about the benefits of stories better than anyone, Browse this site at your leisure. Your children will really enjoy our varied and top quality resources. Thousands of teachers are using them right now! And if you like our work, spread the word: the more people know about us, the more children will benefit .

Stories for children

At Bedtime Stories , we have a great collection of short stories to educate children about values, with all sorts of characters and situations. We offer them as a great educational resource for parents and teachers.

New stories and themes are frequently added: you will never be short of new educational stories!

Once upon a time, a greedy, rich man hired a great mathematician . The rich man wanted the mathematician to find the best way for him to make the greatest profit in everything he did. The rich man was building a huge safe, and his greatest dream was to fill it with gold and jewels.

The mathematician was shut away for months in his study , before finally believing he had found the solution. But he soon found there were some errors in his calculations, and he started all over again.

One night he appeared at the rich man's house, with a big smile on his face: "I found it!" he said, "My calculations are perfect. " The rich man was going on a long journey the next day , and didn't have time to listen. He promised the mathematician he would pay him double his wages if he would take charge of the business while he was away, and put the new formulas into practice. Excited by his new discovery, the mathematician was delighted to accept .

When the rich man returned, months later, he found that all of his possessions had gone. Furious, he went to ask for an explanation from the mathematician . The mathematician calmly told him what he had done. He had given everything away to people. The rich man couldn't believe it, but the mathematician explained it further.

"For months I analysed how a rich man could gain the maximum benefit, but what I could do was always limited . There's a limit to how much one man can do by himself. Then I understood the key was that many people could help us to achieve the aim. So the conclusion was that helping others was the best way to get more and more people to benefit us. "

Disappointed and furious , the greedy man stormed off, desperate at having lost everything to the hare-brained schemes of a madman. However, while he was walking away disconsolately , several neighbours ran over, worried about him. All of them had been helped when the mathematician shared out the rich man's fortune. They felt so grateful to him that they offered him the hospitality of their houses, and anything such a special man might need. The neighbours even argued over who would get to help him .

Over the next few days, he saw the full results of what the mathematician had calculated. Wherever he went he was received with great honour, and everyone was willing to help him in whatever way they could. He realised that his not having anything had given him much , much more.

In this way, he managed to quickly set up flourishing businesses, but this time he followed the brilliant mathematician's advice. No longer did he keep his riches in a safe , or anything like it. Instead, he shared out his fortune among a hundred friends, whose hearts he had converted into the safest, most grateful and fruitful of safes.

stories classified by values

Bravery Caring nature  Cleverness Comprehension  Constancy  Creativity  Effort  Forgiveness  Friendship  Generosity  Goodness  Humility  Imagination  Integration  Joy  Obedience  OVERCOMING  Patience  Respect  Self control Sharing Sincerity  Teamwork  tidiness Tolerance  Trust  more topics...

• Best rated stories
• Santa has stolen from me!
• The strange teacher who didn’t like his pupils
• An Adventure full of Paint
• The Viking With a Hundred Horns
• A very healthy sneeze

ECRP, Early Childhood Research & Practice is an excellent resource with articles for parents and teachers willing to investigate in the latest techniques and discoveries about early childhood education

Child & Family Web Guide is one of the best parenting resources directory

• Stories listing
• my favorites
• magic and fantasy
• big concepts
• tender and sensitive
• Picture stories
• Classic Tales
• Download stories
• Our own tales -audio
• benefits of storytelling
• how to tell stories
• how to create stories
• Imaginative Ideas for Stories
• Tales usage rules
• link to us!!

A new world of stories to learn values within your family.

If you are not sure where to start, this is a cool sample of our best sections

• Short stories list
• Stories by category
• Latest published stories

Connect to the growing family of people using educational stories.

• Get in touch with a big community of readers. We are more than 170.000 people who like short stories on Facebook
• Start learning spanish with our great collection of short stories in spanish
• This is a site devoted to the whole family . Please share it with your own children and those of your friends.

Multiple resources to provide a creative education

• Using tales to teach
• Tips and tricks to educate
• Articles about education
• Workbook of Values
• Download audio stories
• Picture bedtime stories

And remember, all our stories are available as downloads in PDF format

• Terms of Use
• Privacy policy

37 Best Inspirational & Motivational Short Stories [2024 Update]

There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that had a lasting impact on you?

Stories are one of the most powerful ways to guide, teach, and inspire people. Storytelling is effective because it helps to establish connections among people, as well as between people and the ideas that unite humanity.

Inspirational stories move past creating a sense of connection, and allow the listener to identify with the story wherever they are in their own life , which makes them more receptive to learning.

Some of the best stories contain several different meanings or lessons so they’re effective in communicating complex ideas in ways that are easy to understand.

Finally, storytelling has characteristics that benefits the three main types of learning: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Visual learners benefit from the mental pictures that stories evoke.

Auditory learners are able to focus on the words and voice of the storyteller.

And kinesthetic learners can retain the emotional connections that they feel were created in the story.

No matter what type of learner you are , you can benefit from an inspirational story that comes with a moral.

In this article, I will share 23 short inspirational stories that can teach you valuable lessons .

Table of Contents

23 Best Inspirational Short Stories with a Motivating Moral

1. three feet from gold.

Watch the Video of This Story:

During the gold rush, a man who had been mining in Colorado for several months quit his job, as he hadn’t struck gold yet and the work was becoming tiresome.  He sold his equipment to another man who resumed mining where it had been left off.

The new miner was advised by his engineer that there was gold only three feet away from where the first miner stopped digging.

The engineer was right, which means the first miner was a mere three feet away from striking gold before he quit.

When things start to get hard, try to persevere through the adversity.

Many people give up on following their dreams because the work becomes too difficult, tedious, or tiresome–but often, you’re closer to the finish line than you may think , and if you push just a little harder, you will succeed.

2. Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand

A philosophy professor once stood up before his class with a large empty mayonnaise jar. He filled the jar to the top with large rocks and asked his students if the jar was full.

His students all agreed the jar was full .

He then added small pebbles to the jar, and gave the jar a bit of a shake so the pebbles could disperse themselves among the larger rocks. Then he asked again, “Is the jar full now?”

The students agreed that the jar was still full.

The professor then poured sand into the jar to fill up all the remaining empty space.

The students then agreed again that the jar was full .

The Metaphor:

In this story, the jar represents your life and the r ocks, pebbles, and sand are the things that fill up your life .

The rocks represent the most important projects and things you have going on, such as spending time with your family and maintaining proper health. This means that if the pebbles and the sand were lost, the jar would still be full and your life would still have meaning .

The pebbles represent the things in your life that matter, but that you could live without.

The pebbles are certainly things that give your life meaning (such as your job, house, hobbies, and friendships), but they are not critical for you to have a meaningful life.

These things often come and go, and are not permanent or essential to your overall well-being.

Finally, the sand represents the remaining filler things in your life, and material possessions. This could be small things such as watching television , browsing through your favorite social media site , or running errands.

These things don't mean much to your life as a whole, and are likely only done to waste time or get small tasks accomplished.

The metaphor here is that if you start with putting sand into the jar, you will not have room for rocks or pebbles.

This holds true with the things you let into your life. If you spend all of your time on the small and insignificant things, you will run out of room for the things that are actually important.

In order to have a more effective and efficient life, pay attention to the “rocks,” because they are critical to your long-term well-being .

3. The Elephant Rope

When walking through an elephant camp, a man noticed that the elephants were only secured with a small rope that was tied around one ankle. He wondered why the elephants didn’t break free from the rope, as the elephants were certainly strong enough to do so.

He asked a trainer why the elephants didn’t try to break free, and the trainer responded by saying that they use the same size rope for baby elephants all the way up to adulthood.

Because they’re too small when they’re babies to break free from the rope, they grow up being conditioned that the rope is stronger than they are . As adults, they think the rope can still hold them, so they don’t try to fight it.

The elephants in this case are experiencing learned helplessness . This phenomenon occurs when someone has been conditioned to anticipate discomfort in some way without having a way to avoid it or make it stop.

After enough conditioning, the person will stop any attempts to avoid the pain, even if they see an opportunity to escape.

If you go through life thinking that you can’t do something just because you have failed at doing it in the past, you’re living with a fixed mindset .

You have to let go of your limiting beliefs in order to make the breakthroughs that are required for your ultimate success.

Don’t let other people tell you that you can’t do something, and don’t hold onto an assumption that you can’t grow and learn from past failures.

4. A Wise Man’s Jokes

A wise man once faced a group of people who were complaining about the same issues over and over again. One day, instead of listening to the complaints, he told them a joke and everyone cracked up laughing.

Then, the man repeated the joke. A few people smiled.

Finally, the man repeated the joke a third time– but no one reacted .

The man smiled and said, “You won’t laugh at the same joke more than once. So what are you getting from continuing to complain about the same problem?”

You’re not going to get anywhere if you keep complaining about the same problem but do nothing to fix it.

Don’t waste your time complaining, expecting other people to continue to react to your complaints. Instead, take action to make a change.

5. It’s Never Too Late

In the 1940s, there was a man who, at the age of 65, was living off of $99 social security checks in a small house, driving a beat-up car.

He decided it was time to make a change , so he thought about what he had to offer that other people may benefit from. His mind went to his fried chicken recipe, which his friends and family loved.

He left his home state of Kentucky and traveled throughout the country, trying to sell his recipe to restaurants. He even offered the recipe for free, asking for only a small chunk of the money that was earned.

However, most of the restaurants declined his offer. In fact, 1,009 restaurants said no .

But even after all of the rejections, he persisted. He believed in himself and his chicken recipe.

When he visited restaurant #1,010, he got a YES .

Colonel Hartland Sanders.

There are a few lessons that you can take away from this story.

First, it’s never too late in life to find success . In a society that often celebrates young, successful people, it’s easy to start to think you’re never going to be successful after a certain age.

However, Colonel Sanders is an example that proves that argument wrong.

This story also demonstrates the power of persistence. You have to have confidence in yourself and believe in your work for other people to believe it also.

Disregard anyone who tells you “no” and simply move on.

6. The Boulder and the Gold

There once was a king who decided to do a little experiment. He had a giant boulder put right in the middle of the street. He then hid near the boulder to see who, if anyone, would try to move it out of the way.

First, some wealthy merchants walked by. They walked around the boulder, complaining that the king hasn’t been maintaining the roads very well.

Next, a peasant walked by, heading home with his arms full of food for his family. When he noticed the boulder, he put his groceries down and attempted to move it out of everyone’s way. It took him a while to move it, but he eventually succeeded.

After the peasant gathered up his groceries to carry on home, he noticed a bag lying in the middle of the road, just where the boulder once was.

He opened the bag to find that it was stuffed full of gold coins , along with a letter from the king saying that the bag’s gold was a reward for the peasant to keep.

The king gave this gift because the peasant had taken the time and energy to move the boulder out of the road for the convenience of others who would be traveling the road in the future.

The peasant in this story was taught by the king that every obstacle you face offers an opportunity to improve.

If you’re able to push through moments that are challenging, you may end up being much better off than you were before you started trying.

This story also offers a lesson of personal responsibility.

If you see a job ahead of you, don’t leave it for the next person to do. Rather, step up and get the job done to help the people who come after you.

(To learn more about this concept, here are 8 key ingredients of personal responsibility .)

7. Dirty Money

A well-respected speaker began a seminar by showing an audience of 150 people a crisp $20 bill.

He asked, “Who wants this $20 bill?”

All 150 people nodded.

He said, “I am going to give this money to someone, but first….”

Then he proceeded to crumple the bill up.

He asked the crowd again if anyone wanted it.

All 150 hands went up in the air.

The speaker then dropped the money on the floor and stomped all over it.

He then raised it in the air to show the crowd. The money was filthy.

“Does anyone want it now?”

Every hand went up.

The speaker proceeded to tell the crowd that no matter what he did to ruin the money, people still wanted it because its value remained the same .

It was still worth $20.

Life often beats us up to the point where we feel inadequate. We deal with bad circumstances and make bad choices that we have to deal with later. However, no matter what you go through, your value will remain the same .

You have something special to offer that no one can take away from you.

8. The Ultimate Test

One night, four college students stayed up late partying, even though they knew they had a test the next day. The next morning, they came up with a plan to get out of having to take their test.

Each student rolled around in dirt and then went to the teacher’s office.

They told the teacher that they had gotten a flat tire the night before, and they spent the entire night pushing their car back to campus.

The teacher listened, and to the students’ delight, he offered a retest three days later.

On the day of the test, the students went to their teacher’s office. The teacher put all four of the students in separate rooms to take the test. The students were okay with that because they had been given a chance to study.

The test had 2 questions:

1) Your Name __________ (1 Points)

2) Which tire was flat? __________ (99 Points)

• Front Right

Aside from making wise decisions, you always need to take responsibility for your actions .

This means not blaming other people for your mistakes, not complaining about the reality of the present moment, and not giving in to other people’s pressure.

9. What a Waste

A mother camel and her baby were lying down, soaking up the sun.

The baby camel asked his mom, “Why do we have these big bumps on our back?”

The mom stopped to think and then said, “We live in the desert where there is not much water available. Our humps store water to help us survive on long journeys.”

The baby camel then stopped to think and said, “Well, why do we have long legs with rounded feet?”

His mother replied, “They are meant to help us walk through sand.”

The baby asked a third question, “Why are my eyelashes so long?”

The mother replied, “Your long eyelashes offer you protection from sand when it blows in the wind.”

Finally, the baby said, “If we have all of these natural abilities given to us to walk through the desert, what’s the use for camels in the Zoo?”

The skills and abilities that you possess won’t be useful if you’re not in the right environment.

You’ve probably heard of a professional who ditched his or her career to follow their dreams–or the person who remains unfulfilled in their job, but doesn’t try to make a change .

If you’re stuck in a career that isn’t the right fit, you have to do some self-reflection to realize where you strengths lie that are going to waste. ( Here is a five-step process to identify your personal strengths .)

Turn to people that you know the best as well as professionals in any given market so you can start thinking about what may be better for you.

Think big and remain open to new ideas.

10. Breathing With No Air

A boy once asked a wise old man what the secret to success is.

After listening to the boy’s question, the wise man told the boy to meet him at the river in the morning and he would be given the answer there.

In the morning, the wise man and the boy began walking toward the river. They continued on into the river, past the point of the water covering their nose and mouth.  At this time, the wise man ducked the boy into the water.

As he struggled to get out, the wise man continued to push him further down. The boy felt a fish slip by his leg and squirmed to get up even harder. The man eventually pulled the boy’s head up so he could get air. The boy gasped as he inhaled a deep breath of air.

The wise man said, ‘What were you fighting for when you were under water?”

The boy replied, “Air!”

The man said, “There you have the secret to success. When you want to gain success as much as you wanted air when you were under water, you will obtain it. That’s the only secret.”

Success starts with the desire to achieve something.

If your motivation is weak , your results will follow suit.

Think about what you desire the most in life and work towards getting it. Don’t allow your environment or other people to influence the things that you truly want.

Just because the fish swimming by is comfortable with being under water doesn’t mean that you are.

11. Sweet Dreams

A young boy and girl were enjoying a pleasant afternoon playing outside in their neighborhood together.

The boy showed the girl his collection of beautiful, unique marbles. In turn, the girl showed the boy the handful of candy that she had just gotten for her birthday.

The boy proposed that the two of them switch–he would give her all of his marbles if she handed over all of her candy.

The girl agreed, as she found the marbles to be beautiful as well.

The boy handed over all of his marbles, but kept one–the most exquisite one of them all–in his pocket.

The girl kept her promise and gave the boy all of her candy.

That night, the girl was happy with the exchange and peacefully went to sleep.

The boy, however, couldn’t sleep, as he was up wondering if the girl had secretly kept some of her candy, just like he did with the marble.

If you don’t give 100% in your relationships, you will always assume your partner isn’t giving 100% either.

If you want your relationships to be built on trust, you have to be a participating factor in that.

Honesty grows your character.

By being honest in relationships, you’re holding your partner accountable to do the same. It allows both you and your partner to continuously think about your choices and how you can help (or hurt) your partner and your relationship.

12. Teamwork

There was once a man who lived with his three sons. His sons were hard workers, but they constantly fought with each other .

Even though the man continuously tried to help his sons make peace with each other, he was never successful. In fact, their fighting got to a point where their neighbors would make fun of them.

Eventually, the father became ill. He begged his sons to learn how to work together because of his impending death, but they didn’t listen. The father then decided to teach his sons a practical lesson to help his sons forget their differences and become a united team.

The father called his sons and said, “I’ll give you each an equal collection of sticks to break in half. Whoever breaks the sticks the fastest will be rewarded.”

After agreeing to the task, the father gave each of his sons 10 sticks and instructed them to break each stick in half.

This task took the sons mere minutes to complete, but once they were finished, they started to fight about who finished first.

The father said, “Dear sons, the task isn’t finished. Now I’ll give each of you 10 more sticks, however, you must break the sticks in half as a bundle rather than snapping each one separately.”

His sons agreed and attempted to do what he had asked. They each tried their best, but none could break the bundle in half.

They told their father that they had failed.

In response, their father said, “See, it was easy to break the sticks in half individually, but you couldn’t break all 10 of them at the same time.

Similarly, if the three of you stay united as a team, nobody will be able to harm you. However, if you fight all the time, anyone will be able to defeat you. Please come together as a united team.”

This lesson helped the man’s sons understand the power of being a team and promised their father that, moving forward, they would work together as a team, no matter what the situation was.

Being an effective member of a team helps contribute to the overall moral and motivation of the team.

Strong teams are naturally aligned to work harder, support each other, and be cooperative with working toward a mutual goal.

Individuals each have diverse talents, strengths, and weaknesses to contribute to teamwork, so staying focused on the task at hand rather than allowing personal disputes to get in the way will help you achieve your desired results. 

13. Frogs for Dinner

A lady was once heating up a pot of water on a gas stove with the intent of cooking pasta for her family for dinner.

A frog fell into the pot while it was sitting on the stove. While it wasn’t his intention to be stuck in a pot of water, he didn’t try to escape. He was comfortable enough as he was.

The lady soon turned on the flame to begin boiling the water.

As the water’s temperature began to rise, the frog was able to adjust his body temperature accordingly, so he remained in the pot without trying to do anything to change the situation.

However, as the water approached its boiling point, the frog’s body temperature could no longer keep up. He finally tried to jump out of the pot, but with water temperature continuing to increase, he didn’t have it in him to make the leap.

It was too late for the frog to save himself.

Things don’t always go as planned in life, and they certainly don’t always go the way we want them to. But, no matter how bad a situation is, it’s critical to be proactive and face the problem head-on.

Unlike the frog, who waited until the last minute to try to do anything about the problem he was clearly facing, it’s important to project the future outcomes of the obstacles that hinder you and mediate them before they get past the point of no return .

You have to avoid wasting time and take appropriate action before problems get out of hand or become too much to handle.

14. Will You Marry Me?

Centuries ago, in a small Italian town, there was a business owner who was in a great amount of debt.

His banker, who was an old, unattractive man, strongly desired the business owner’s younger beautiful daughter.

The banker decided to offer the businessman a deal to forgive the debt that he owed the bank completely. However, there was a bit of a catch.

In order for the businessman to become debt-free, he was to have his daughter marry the banker.

The businessman didn’t want to concede to this agreement, but he had no other choice, as his debt was so extreme.

The banker said he would put two small stones into a bag–one of which was white, and the other black .

The daughter would then need to reach into the bag and blindly choose a stone.

If she chose the black stone, the businessman’s debt would be cleared and the daughter would have to marry the banker.

However , if she chose the white stone, the debt would be cleared and the daughter would not have to marry him.

While standing in the stone-filled path in the businessman’s yard, the banker reached down and chose two small stones, not realizing that the businessman’s daughter was watching him. She noticed that he picked up two black stones and put them in the bag.

When it came time for the daughter to pick a stone out of the bag, she felt she had three choices:

• Refuse to do it.
• Take out both stones and expose the banker’s cheating.
• Pick a stone, knowing it would be black, and sacrifice herself to get her father out of debt.

She picked a stone from the bag, and immediately ‘accidentally’ dropped it into the abundance of stones where they were all standing.

She said to the banker, “I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy! Oh well. Just look in the bag to see what color stone is in there now so you will know what color stone I picked.”

Of course, the remaining stone was black . Because the banker didn’t want his deceit to be exposed, he played along, acting as if the stone that the businessman’s daughter dropped had to have been white.

He cleared the businessman’s debt and the daughter remained free from having to spend the rest of her life with the banker.

While you may have to think outside of the box sometimes, it’s always possible to conquer a difficult situation.

You don’t have to always give in to the options you’re presented with.

Challenge the status quo.

Think creatively.

Engage in productive nonconformity when possible.

Don’t be afraid to question the things that are expected to be true. In order to overcome challenges, you have to think in ways that you’ve never thought before.

15. Wait…What?

A carpenter who was nearing retirement told his boss that he was ready to end his career and spend his time with his wife and family. He would miss his work, but he felt it was time to spend his time with the people who were important to him.

His boss was saddened by this news, as this carpenter had been a good, reliable employee for many years. He asked the carpenter if he could do him a favor and build just one more house.

The carpenter reluctantly conceded, even though his passion for building had faded.

While he was building this last house, his normal work ethic faded and his efforts were mediocre, at best. He used inexpensive and inferior materials and cut corners wherever he could. It was a poor way to finish such a dedicated career that he once had.

When the carpenter was finished, his boss came to look at the house. He gave the key to the carpenter and said, “This house is my gift to you for all of the hard work you have done for me over the years.” 

The carpenter was astonished.

What a generous gift this was to receive from his boss, but if he had known he was building a house for himself, he would have made his usual efforts to create a high-quality home.

The same idea applies to how you build your life.

Every day that you wake up offers an opportunity for you to put your best foot forward, yet we often do mediocre work, saving the more important things for “another” day .

Then one day, we find ourselves shocked that our lives aren’t what we had hoped they would be. The “house” we built to live in has a lot of flaws due to a lack of effort.

However, you can’t go back and rebuild it in a day or two.

As people say, “Life is a do-it-yourself project.”

Your attitude and choices help build the life you will live tomorrow. So…build carefully.

16. Toothpaste Recant

One night in July at an all-girls summer camp, the campers were gathered around in a circle for their nighttime devotions.

The counselor asked if any of the girls wanted to share something that had happened that day that impacted them.

One camper raised her hand and said a girl from another camp cabin had said something that hurt her feelings and she was really upset about it.

The camp counselor went to the bathroom to grab a tube of toothpaste.

She took the tube and squeezed it just a bit so some toothpaste came out. She then tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but it just created a mess. Then she squeezed the tube even more, pushing more toothpaste out and creating even more of a mess, but none of it would go back into the tube.

The counselor then told the campers, “this toothpaste represents the words you speak. Once you say something that you want to take back, it’s impossible and it only creates a mess. Think before you speak, and make sure your words are going to good use before you let them out.”

Speaking is a fundamental social skill required for living a successful life.

However, many are careless with their words, but they hold so much power. They can have a direct impact on the outcome of a situation, creating a helpful or hurtful reaction in our world. T

he problem is, once words come out of your mouth, no amount of “I’m sorrys” will make them go back in: blurting something out and then attempting to take it back is like shutting the gate after the horse has taken off. 

Thinking before you speak allows you the time to consider the potential impact of your words.

Be careful when choosing where and when you let your words out. You can easily hurt other people, and once you do, you can’t take it back.

Words define who we are by revealing our attitudes and character, giving people an indication of our intellect or ignorance. 

Stop for a minute before you speak and question yourself about why you’re saying what you are. Are you trying to relay information? Relate to someone else?

Make sure you’re able to take responsibility for whatever you’re about to say.

17. Just Be

One evening, after spending several days with his new wife, a man leaned over and whispered into her ear, “I love you.” 

She smiled – and the man smiled back – and she said, “When I’m eighty years old and I’m thinking back on my entire life, I know I will remember this moment.”

A few minutes later, she drifted off to sleep.

The man was left with the silence of the room and the soft sound of his wife’s breathing.

He stayed awake, thinking about everything they had done together, from their first date to their first vacation together and ultimately to their big wedding. These were just some of the life choices that the couple had made together that had led to this very moment of silence in the presence of each other.

At one point, the man then realized that it didn’t matter what they had done or where they had gone. Nor did it matter where they were going.

The only thing that mattered was the serenity of that very moment.

Just being together. Breathing together. And resting together.

We can’t let the clock, calendar, or pressure from external sources take over our lives and allow us to forget the fact that every moment of our lives is a gift and a miracle – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it is.

Being mindful in the special moments that you spend in the presence of the ones that you love are the moments that truly give your life meaning. (For more on this, here are 71 mindfulness exercises you can use to live in the present moment .)

18. The Weight of the World

Once, a psychology professor walked around his classroom full of students holding a glass of water with his arm straightened out to the side.

He asked his students, “How heavy is this glass of water?”

The students started to shout out guesses–ranging anywhere from 4 ounces to one pound.

The professor replied, “The absolute weight of this glass isn’t what matters while I’m holding it. Rather, it’s the amount of time that I hold onto it that makes an impact.”

“If I hold it for, say, two minutes, it doesn’t feel like much of a burden. If I hold it for an hour, its weight may become more apparent as my muscles begin to tire.

If I hold it for an entire day– or week –my muscles will cramp and I’ll likely feel numb or paralyzed with pain, making me feel miserable and unable to think about anything aside from the pain that I’m in. “

“In all of these cases, the actual weight of the glass will remain the same, but the longer I clench onto it, the heavier it feels to me and the more burdensome it is to hold.”

The class understood and shook their heads in agreement.

The professor continued to say, “This glass of water represents the worries and stresses that you carry around with you every day.  If you think about them for a few minutes and then put them aside, it’s not a heavy burden to bear.

If you think about them a little longer, you will start to feel the impacts of the stress. If you carry your worries with you all day, you will become incapacitated, prohibiting you from doing anything else until you let them go.”

Put down your worries and stressors. Don’t give them your entire attention while your life is passing you by.

Let go of things that are out of your control.

Don’t carry your worries around with you everywhere you go, as they will do nothing but bring you down.

Put your “glass down” each night and move on from anything that is unnecessarily stressing you out.

Don’t carry this extra weight into the next day.

19. Cherish Your Struggles

One day, a girl came upon a cocoon, and she could tell that a butterfly was trying to hatch.

She waited and watched the butterfly struggle for hours to release itself from the tiny hole. All of a sudden, the butterfly stopped moving–it seemed to be stuck.

The girl then decided to help get the butterfly out. She went home to get a pair of scissors to cut open the cocoon. The butterfly was then easily able to escape, however, its body was swollen and its wings were underdeveloped. 

The girl still thought she had done the butterfly a favor as she sat there waiting for its wings to grow in order to support its body. However, that wasn’t happening.

The butterfly was unable to fly, and for the rest of its life, it could only move by crawling around with little wings and a large body.

Despite the girl’s good intentions, she didn’t understand that the restriction of the butterfly’s cocoon and the struggle the butterfly had to go through in order to escape served an important purpose.

As butterflies emerge from tight cocoons, it forces fluid from their body into their wings to prepare them to be able to fly.

The struggles that you face in life help you grow and get stronger .

There is often a reason behind the requirement of doing hard work and being persistent. When enduring difficult times, you will develop the necessary strength that you’ll need in the future.

Without having any struggles, you won’t grow–which means it’s very important to take on personal challenges for yourself rather than relying on other people to always help you. 

20. Seeking Happiness

There were 200 people attending a seminar on mental and physical health.

At one point, the speaker told the group they were going to do an activity. He gave each attendee one balloon and told them to write their name on it. Then, the balloons were collected and moved into a very small room.

The participants were then asked to go into the other room and were given 2 minutes to find their balloon.

It was chaos…

People were searching frantically for their balloon, pushing each other and running into one another while they grabbed a balloon, looked at it, and inevitably tossed it to the side.

At the end of the 2 minutes, no one had found the balloon that had their name on it.

Then, the speaker asked the participants to go back in the room and pick up one balloon at random, look at the name, and return it to its owner. Within minutes, everyone had been reunited with their original balloon.

The speaker then told the group, “This is what it’s like when people are frantically searching for their own happiness in life .

People push others aside to get the things that they want that they believe will bring them happiness. However, our happiness actually lies in helping other people and working together as a community.”

You will get your happiness if you help other people find theirs. The Dalai Lama says, “If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Helping others makes us happy because it gives us a sense of purpose.

In fact, a study from the London School of Economics found that the more you help other people, the happier you will be.

The researchers compared the variance in happiness levels of people who don’t help others on a regular basis to the happiness of weekly volunteers. They found that the participants had the same variance in happiness as those who make $75,000 – $100,000 annually vs $20,000.

Helping others brings us happiness for three reasons:

• Diversion : When you worry less about your own needs–in this case, finding your own balloon–the stress of that hunt decreases.

Taking your focus away from the fact that you can’t find your own balloon lets you divert your attention away from your own problem.  The feeling of compassion replaces the feeling of need.

• Perspective : Having concern for other people helps us remember that we are all facing similar problems in life–no matter what the individual severity of the issue is.

Sometimes when we are focused on our own issues, they get put into perspective when we encounter the true suffering of others (for example, bereavement or a  severe disability ).

It’s easy to then realize the excess amount of attention we’ve been giving our own problems.  Having compassion helps us put our problems into perspective.

• Connection :  Connecting with others by helping them   can bring happiness into your life.

Humans are social beings that need to have positive connections with other people in order to be happy. Connecting with other people enriches our lives and gives us a sense of fulfillment.

21. There Was Once a Boy…

There was once a boy who was growing up in a very wealthy family.

One day, his father decided to take him on a trip to show him how others lived who were less fortunate. His father’s goal was to help his son appreciate everything that he has been given in life.

The boy and his father pulled up to a farm where a very poor family lived. They spent several days on the farm, helping the family work for their food and take care of their land.

When they left the farm, his dad asked his son if he enjoyed their trip and if he had learned anything during the time they spent with this other family.

The boy quickly replied, “It was fantastic, that family is so lucky!”

Confused, his father asked what he meant by that.

The boy said, “Well, we only have one dog, but that family has four–and they have chickens!

We have four people in our home, but they have 12! They have so many people to play with!

We have a pool in our yard, but they have a river running through their property that is endless.

We have lanterns outside so we can see at night, but they have the wide open sky and the beautiful stars to give them wonder and light.

We have a patio, but they have the entire horizon to enjoy–they have endless fields to run around in and play.

We have to go to the grocery store, but they are able to grow their own food . Our high fence protects our property and our family, but they don‘t need such a limiting structure, because their friends protect them.”

The father was speechless.

Finally, the boy added, “Thank you for showing me how poor people live, they’re so lucky.”

True wealth and happiness aren’t measured by material belongings .

Being around the people you love, enjoying the beautiful, natural environment, and having freedom are much more valuable.

A rich life can mean different things to different people. What are your values and priorities?

If you have whatever is important to you , you can consider yourself to be wealthy.

22. A Pound is a Pound

There was once a farmer who, each week, sold a pound of butter to a baker.

After several weeks of buying a pound of butter from the farmer, the baker decided to weigh the butter that he was receiving to ensure it was indeed a full pound.

When the baker weighed it, he learned that the butter was under a pound , which enraged him. He felt he was being cheated and he decided to take the farmer to court.

When in court, the judge asked the farmer how he was weighing the butter.

The farmer said, “Your Honor, I am poor. I do not own an exact measuring tool. However, I do have a scale.”

The judge then asked if the farmer uses the scale to measure the butter.

The farmer said, “Your Honor, I have been buying a one-pound loaf of bread from the baker since long before he began purchasing butter from me.

Whenever the baker brings bread for me, I put it on the scale and then measure out the exact same weight in butter to give him in return. So, if the baker is not getting a pound of butter, he is also not giving a pound of bread like he promised.”

You get what you give. If you try to cheat others out of what you promise them, you will be cheated in return. The more honest you are, the easier it is to trust other people and not suspect they may be cheating you in some way.

When you’re honest, not only will other people trust you, but you will also feel more confident in your trust with others.

Honesty is always the best route–especially if you want others to be honest with you as well.

23. Jumping Frogs

A group of frogs was hopping through the forest when two of them accidentally hopped into a deep pit. The other frogs stood around the pit, and, seeing how deep it was, they told the two frogs that they couldn’t help them–there was no hope.

However, fighting for their lives, the two frogs ignored the others and started to try jumping out of the pit.

The frogs at the top continued to tell the frogs in the pit to give up, as there was no way they would be able to jump out.

After trying over and over, one of the frogs listened to the others and gave up, accepting his fate and falling to his death. But the other frog continued to jump with all of his might. The crowd of frogs yelled down the pit for the frog to just stop–he wouldn’t make it.

But the frog jumped even harder and persisted until he finally got out. Upon reaching the top, the other frogs said, “We thought there was no way any frog could jump that high–couldn’t you hear us?”

The frog then signaled to the others that he was deaf, and he thought that the frogs standing around the pit were encouraging him the whole time.

Others’ words can greatly impact your attitude and actions. Ignore the naysayers. Only engage with those who encourage you and believe in your ability to succeed.

Furthermore, think about what you say to people before speaking so you can make sure what you’re saying is supportive. Your support (or lack thereof) could make the difference between success and failure.

24. The Ultimate Gift

There was once a little girl who desperately needed an emergency blood transfusion to save her life. 

Her only chance of surviving would be to get a transfusion from her younger brother, who had miraculously overcome the same disease she had, and therefore had antibodies in his blood that were needed to fight the illness.

The doctor explained to the little boy that it would save his sister’s life if he were to give her his blood. The boy hesitated for a moment before agreeing to give his blood if it would help his sister. At the age of 5, this was scary, but he would do anything to save his big sister’s life.

As the blood transfusion was happening, he lay next to his sister in the hospital and was overcome with happiness as he saw the color coming back to her cheeks. Then he looked up at the doctor and quietly asked, “When will I start to die?”

The boy had assumed that he was giving his life in order to save hers. The little boy’s parents were astonished over the misunderstanding that led the boy to think they were choosing his sister over him–and even more astonished that he had agreed to do so.

The doctor replied, explaining that he was not going to die, he was just going to allow his sister to live a long, healthy life alongside him.

This is an example of extreme courage and self-sacrificing love from a young boy that we can all learn from. The love and care that he showed for his sister relays an inspiring message about selflessness.

While we may not be faced with such a life or death decision, being selfless in general can help us connect with others, which is rewarding and fulfilling.

25. Angry Nails

There was once a boy who became angry so frequently with his friends at school that he was constantly getting sent home.

His temper was disruptive to the class and hurtful to other students.

His father came up with a strategy to try to deter the boy from getting angry so easily. He gave his son a hammer and some nails and told him to hammer a nail into the family’s fence every time the boy got angry in the future.

The following day, the boy got angry 37 times, and had to hammer as many nails into the fence.

Over the next few weeks, the boy got tired of hammering nails into the fence and he gradually started to control his temper. Slowly, the number of nails he was hammering into the fence started to decrease.

The boy realized that it was easier to remain calm when he started to feel angry than to gather the tools, go outside, and start hammering.

Eventually, the boy stopped losing his temper altogether. His dad noticed, and told the boy to remove a nail from the fence every day that he was able to keep his temper under control.

Eventually, as the weeks went by, all of the nails had been taken out of the fence. The father and son then stood in front of the broken fence, which was completely scattered with holes.  

The father turned to his son and said, “You have done well, but look at the holes in the fence. They cannot be repaired. When you get angry at other people, it leaves a scar just like the holes you see in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you say I’m sorry one hundred times, the injury is still there.”

Control your anger toward other people. While you may not see the damage that it does, it can leave irreparable wounds that can eventually break them.

Be kind to others and think before you let your emotions get the best of you.

26. Walking on Water

Once there was a boy who lived with his family on a farm.

They had a beautiful dog who would go down to the pond for hours every day in the spring and summer with the boy to practice retrieving various items.

The boy wanted to prepare his dog for any scenario that may come up during duck season because he wanted his dog to be the best hunting dog in the whole county.

The boy and his dog had vigorous training sessions every day until the dog was so obedient, he wouldn’t do anything unless he was told to do so by the boy.

As duck season rolled in with the fall and winter months, the boy and his dog were eager to be at their regular spot down at the pond near their house.

Only a few minutes passed before the two heard the first group of ducks flying overhead. The boy slowly raised his gun and shot three times before killing a duck, which landed in the center of the pond.

When the boy signaled his dog to retrieve the duck, the dog charged through the duck blind and bushes toward the pond. However, instead of swimming in the water like he had practiced so many times, the dog walked on the water’s surface, retrieved the duck, and returned it to the boy.  

The boy was astonished. His dog had an amazing ability to walk on water–it was like magic. The boy knew no one would ever believe this amazing thing that he had just witnessed. He had to get someone else down there to see this incredible phenomenon.

The boy went to a nearby farmer’s house and asked if he would hunt with him the next morning. The neighbor agreed, and met up with the boy the following morning at his regular spot by the pond.

The pair patiently waited for a group of ducks to fly overhead, and soon enough, they heard them coming. The boy told the neighbor to go ahead and take a shot, which the neighbor did, killing one duck.

Just as the day before, the boy signaled to his dog to fetch the duck. Miraculously, the dog walked on the water again to retrieve the duck.

The boy was bursting with pride and could hardly contain himself when he asked his neighbor, “Did you see that? What do you think?!”

The neighbor responded, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but your dog doesn’t even know how to swim.”

The boy sat in disbelief as his neighbor pointed out a potential flaw of the dog rather than recognizing the fact that what he had just done was a miracle.

People will often downplay others’ abilities or achievements because they’re unable to accomplish the same thing. Don’t let this bring you down. Just move on and keep working on improving yourself. Maintaining a positive mindset is a key part of being successful.

Furthermore, be conscious of instances in which you may be tempted to not give credit where it is deserved. Pointing out other people’s shortcomings does not make you a superior person.

27. It’s Not That Complicated

There was once a very wise man living in ancient times. He was elderly and educated and held knowledge and books to the highest regard.

One day while on a walk, he realized that his shoes were really starting to wear out. Because he spent a lot of time walking on a daily basis, he knew he had to find the best shoes to support and protect his feet.

But, back then, this wasn’t such an easy task, as he couldn’t jump online to do some research and have shoes delivered to his door.

The man didn’t want to make things worse by purchasing the wrong shoes and having inadequate protection, which would lead to injuries and the inability to leave his home and walk to find new books to read.

The man gathered all of the books he could that were written by only those that he admired the most to search for the answer to his question, “What do I do if my shoes have fallen apart?”

He read through several books for many hours before finding out that he had no choice but to go buy a new pair of shoes. He then spent a lot of time reading about how to know if a pair of shoes fits properly.

Once he was satisfied with the answers he found, he was proud of himself for doing the research and he felt confident in his ability to buy a high-quality replacement for his old shoes.

He figured if he hadn’t done his research, he probably would have gone barefoot for the rest of his life, as he had no one to tell him how to fix his shoes.

Following the books’ instructions, the man took a stick and measured his foot with it. He then went to the market and finally came upon a pair of shoes that he liked. However, he realized he had left the stick back at home, which was far away from the shop.

By the time the man returned to the market, the shop was closed. And, by that point, his shoes were completely split, so he had to return home barefoot.

The next morning, he walked back to the market with bare feet, but the shoes that he had chosen the day before had been sold. The wise man explained what had happened to the shopkeeper, who reacted with a sense of surprise, asking, “Why didn’t you buy the shoes yesterday?”

The wise man replied, “Because I forgot the stick that I had used to measure my feet back home. And anyone who knows anything about shoes knows that you have to have the correct measurements of your feet before you can buy shoes. I didn’t want to buy the wrong size, and I was following the normal instructions.”

Even more confused, the shopkeeper asked, “But your foot was with you, why didn’t you just try the shoes on?”

The wise man was equally confused in return and responded, “All the books say shoes must be bought with the exact same measurements of the shoes you already own.”

Laughing, the shop owner replied “Oh, no! You don’t need the advice from books to buy shoes. You just need to have your feet, some money, and some common sense to not complicate things.”

Sometimes you need to take action without overthinking things. Knowledge often comes in handy, but in some circumstances, if you lack experience or common sense , your knowledge will only get you so far. In fact, it could make things seem a lot more complicated than they actually are.

If you’re facing an issue, don’t forget to use your reasoning skills in addition to anything you’ve learned in a formal learning environment.

28. Don’t Hold Back

There was once a company whose CEO was very strict and often disciplined the workers for their mistakes or perceived lack of progress.

One day, as the employees came into work, they saw a sign on the door that read, “Yesterday, the person who has been holding you back from succeeding in this company passed away. Please gather for a funeral service in the assembly room.”

While the employees were saddened for the family of their CEO, they were also intrigued at the prospect of being able to now move up within the company and become more successful.”

Upon entering the assembly room, many employees were surprised to see the CEO was, in fact, present. They wondered among themselves, “If it wasn’t him who was holding us back from being successful, who was it? Who has died?”

One by one, the employees approached the coffin, and upon looking inside, each was quite surprised. They didn’t understand what they saw.

In the coffin, there was simply a mirror. So when each employee looked in to find out who had been “holding them back from being successful” everyone saw themselves. Next to the mirror, there was a sign that read:

The only person who is able to limit your growth is you .

You are the only person who can influence your success. Your life changes when you break through your limiting beliefs and realize that you’re in control of your life.

The most influential relationship you can have is the relationship you have with yourself.

Now you know who has been holding you back from living up to your true potential. Are you going to keep allowing that person to hold you back?

You can’t blame anyone else if you’re not living up to your potential. You can’t let other people get you down about mistakes you make or their negative perception of your efforts.

You have to take personal responsibility for your work –both the good and the bad–and be proactive about making any necessary adjustments.

29. The Chef’s Daughter

Once there was a girl who was complaining to her dad that her life was so hard and that she didn’t know how she would get through all of her struggles. She was tired, and she felt like as soon as one problem was solved, another would arise.

Being a chef, the girl’s father took her into his kitchen. He boiled three pots of water that were equal in size. He placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in another, and ground coffee beans in the final pot.

He let the pots sit and boil for a while, not saying anything to his daughter.

He turned the burners off after twenty minutes and removed the potatoes from the pot and put them in a bowl. He did the same with the boiled eggs. He then used a ladle to scoop out the boiled coffee and poured it in a mug. He asked his daughter, “What do you see?”

She responded, “Potatoes, eggs, and coffee.”

Her father told her to take a closer look and touch the potatoes. After doing so, she noticed they were soft. Her father then told her to break open an egg. She acknowledged the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he told her to take a sip of the coffee. It was rich and delicious.

After asking her father what all of this meant, he explained that each of the three food items had just undergone the exact same hardship–twenty minutes inside of boiling water.

However, each item had a different reaction.

The potato went into the water as a strong, hard item, but after being boiled, it turned soft and weak.

The egg was fragile when it entered the water, with a thin outer shell protecting a liquid interior. However, after it was left to boil, the inside of the egg became firm and strong.

Finally, the ground coffee beans were different. Upon being exposed to boiling water, they changed the water to create something new altogether.

He then asked his daughter, “Which are you? When you face adversity, do you respond by becoming soft and weak? Do you build strength? Or do you change the situation?”

Life is full of ups and downs, wins and losses, and big shifts in momentum, and adversity is a big part of this experience.

And while many of us would rather not face adversity, it doesn’t have to always be a negative thing. In fact, handling adversity can be a positive experience that can lead to personal development .

You choose how you respond to adversity, whether you let it break you down or you stand up in the face of it and learn from it. In many instances, facing adversity gives you a chance to learn important lessons  that can help you grow as a person.

When facing adversity, it’s important to recognize your freedom to choose how you respond. You can respond in a way that ultimately limits you, or you can choose to have a more productive response that could potentially open windows of opportunity that we didn’t know existed.

30. Cleaning Turtles

There was once a man who walked his dog every Sunday morning around a lake near his house. Week after week, he saw the same elderly woman sitting at the edge of the water with a small metal cage next to her.

The man’s curiosity finally got the best of him and he approached the woman one day. He noticed that the cage was actually a small trap and she had three small turtles in it. In her lap, there was a fourth turtle that she was carefully wiping down with a sponge.

The man greeted her and said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do with these turtles every week?”

She smiled and explained to him that she was cleaning their shells because any algae or scum that builds up on a turtle’s shell reduces its ability to absorb heat and slows down their swimming. It can also corrode their shell and weaken it over time.

The man was impressed as the woman continued, “I do this every Sunday morning to help the turtles.”

“But don’t most turtles live their entire lives with algae on their shells?” the man asked.

The woman agreed that was true.

He replied, “Well then, you’re kind to do this, but are you really making a difference if most turtles don’t have people around to clean their shells?”

The woman laughed as she looked down at the small turtle on her lap. “Young man, if this little turtle could talk, he would say I’m making all the difference in the world.'”

“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.” — Dr. Seuss

Just because you may not be able to change the world or help everyone, you can still make a huge difference in one person’s life by offering them any help that you can. Don’t choose to not do anything because you can’t do everything .

The actions of one person can make a world of difference to someone else. When you see someone in need, you may never know how much of a difference your help can make in their life.

31. Puppy Love

A pet shop owner got a new litter of puppies and was ready to sell them to their “forever” families. A young girl walked by the shop and noticed a sign saying, “Puppies for Sale” and of course was very eager to go inside.

She asked the owner, “How much do the puppies cost?” The owner replied, “They are all around $50.”

The girl emptied her pocket change and told the store owner that she only had about $2, but she still wanted to look at them.

The shop owner whistled for the dogs, who came running down the hall of his shop. Five tiny furballs, followed by one, limping behind the rest. The girl immediately singled out the lagging puppy and asked the store owner what was wrong with him.

The owner explained that the puppy was born with a deformity– he was missing a hip socket. He would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

The girl got excited, saying, “I want that puppy!”

The owner replied, “You don’t want to buy that puppy. If you really want him, you can have him for free.”

The girl became upset. She looked at the owner and said, “I don’t want to have him for free. That puppy is worth just as much as the others. I’ll give you the change I have now and a dollar a month until I have paid for the puppy entirely.”

The owner continued, “This dog is never going to be able to run and play like all of the other dogs, I think you’re going to regret this decision.”

To his surprise, the girl reached down and rolled up her pant leg to reveal a crippled leg that was supported by a large metal brace. She looked up at the owner and softly replied, ‘Well, I’m not much of a runner, and this puppy needs someone who understands.”

Don’t make assumptions about other people’s wants, needs, or abilities. Every one of us has our own weaknesses, whether it’s physical or mental.

The trick is to not allow your weaknesses to slow you down, and instead, find others in the world who can support you. Find and surround yourself with people who challenge you to reach your potential.

32. The Gift of the Magi

The Story :

There was once a young couple who was struggling to make ends meet during the holiday season. But despite their financial troubles, they both wanted to buy a special gift for the other.

After crying about their situation, the wife stood by the window and looked out with no interest. The next day was Christmas, and she had only $10 to buy her husband a gift. She had been saving as much as she could, but bills always cost more than expected.

But there was one thing that the wife had that would be valuable enough to sell: her long, flowy hair. She contacted a wig maker and asked them how much money she could earn if she gave them her hair. They said $100.

With that money, she quickly went from shop to shop looking for the perfect gift. And then she found it: a gold watch chain for his beloved gold watch that had been passed down for generations.

With 82 cents in change, she ran home, excited about the gift she had gotten for her husband.

While waiting for him to get home from work, the wife became nervous that he would no longer find her attractive with her new, short hair.

When he walked in, he stopped inside the door. He was as quiet and his eyes looked strangely at his wife with an expression in them that she did not understand.

She said to him, “Honey, don’t look at me like that. I sold my hair. I couldn’t live through Christmas without giving you a gift. My hair will grow back. Let’s be happy. You don’t know what a beautiful gift I got for you.”

He put his arms around her. And then from inside his coat, he took something out that was tied in paper and threw it on the table. “Listen,” he said. “Nothing like a haircut could make me love you any less. But open this.”

There lay two beautiful combs that she had seen in a shop window and loved for a long time. Combs with jewels–perfect for her beautiful hair. She knew they cost too much for them to afford. And now they were hers, but her hair was gone. She held them to her heart and said, “My hair grows so fast!”

And then she jumped up and held her gift out to him in her open hands. The gold chain sparkled. “Isn’t it perfect? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at your watch a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how they look together.”

He sat down and smiled. “Honey,” he said, “I sold the watch to get the money to buy the combs. And now I think we should have our dinner.”

The Moral :

Appreciate what others do for you. The magi were wise men who were the first to give Christmas gifts. In this story, each person sold the most valuable thing they owned in order to buy a gift for the other.

This story shows the true meaning of gift-giving, which is about the thought and love behind the gift rather than its material value. The couple’s gifts to each other are ultimately meaningless in terms of their practical use, but their representation of love and sacrifice proves to be invaluable for both of them.

33. Everyone Has a Story

There was once a 24 year old boy on a train with his father. Looking out from the train’s window, he shouted…

“Dad, look, the trees are going behind us!”

His dad smiled. The young man caught a couple’s attention sitting nearby, who looked at his childish behavior with pity. Suddenly, the boy exclaimed again…

“Dad, look, the clouds are running with us!”

Annoyed by the commotion, the couple looked at the old man and said, “You should take your son to see a good doctor.”

The old man smiled at the couple and said, “I just did. We are going home from the hospital, my son was blind from birth, and he just got his eyes today.”

Everyone on the planet has a story. Don’t judge people before you truly know them. The truth might surprise you.

34. A Dish of Ice Cream

In the days when ice cream sundaes cost much less, a 10 year old boy entered an ice cream shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.

“How much is an ice cream sundae?”

“50 cents,” replied the waitress.

The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket that had several coins in it.

“How much is a dish of plain ice cream?” he asked.

“35 cents,” she replied impatiently.

The little boy again counted the coins. “I’ll have a plain ice cream,” he said.

The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left.

When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then was surprised at what she saw.

There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were 15 cents – her tip. The boy had enough money for a sundae, but he had ordered plain ice cream so he could leave her a tip.

In a world that constantly tells us we need to have more, it’s important to be reminded of the power of a person’s generosity.

35. A Very Special Bank Account

Let’s say you had a bank account that deposited $86,400 every morning. However, the account carries over no balance from day to day, doesn’t allow you to keep a cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you didn’t use during the day. What would you do?

Probably draw out every dollar every day!

We all have this bank–it is called Time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off whatever time you have failed to use wisely. It carries over no balance from day to day.

It allows no overdraft so you can’t borrow against yourself or use more time than you have. Each day, the account starts fresh. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, it’s your loss and you can’t appeal to get it back.

There is no such thing as borrowing time. You can’t take a loan out on your time or against someone else’s. The time you have is the time you have. Just as it is with money, time management is yours to decide how you spend it.

It is rarely the case of us not having the time to do things, but the case of whether we want to do them and where they fall in our priorities.

36. Hunting Monkeys

A man once asked a child, “Do you know how hunters used to trap monkeys?”

“Instead of chasing them up a tree or shooting arrows at them, they’d lay a heavy glass jar with a narrow neck on the ground with the monkeys’ favorite food inside.

Then they would hide a short distance away, waiting for the unsuspecting monkey to approach.

When it did, the monkey would reach inside and try to grab the snack. But the narrow neck of the jar would prevent the monkey from being able to get its hand out!

It would pull and pull, but it was stuck! There was no way to get its hand out of the jar without letting go of the food.

But instead of letting go, the monkey would keep trying, refusing to drop its dinner.

It was at this moment that the hunters would approach the monkey to catch it.”

“Don’t be like that monkey,” the man warned the child. “In life, to keep fighting another day and grow, you have to know when to quit, when to move on, and when to let go of whatever’s holding you back.”

Sometimes you have to let go and give up what you have now in order to receive something better in the future. Don’t let stubbornness get in your way to success.

37. The Fisherman and the Businessman

Once there was a businessman sitting on the beach in an Italian village.

As he sat and relaxed from his day, he saw a fisherman rowing a small boat full of fish back into the harbor.

Impressed, the businessman yelled out to the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” To which the fisherman replied “Oh, not so long.”

Confused, the businessman asked, “Then why don’t you fish for longer to catch even more?”

“Because this is enough to feed my family and even offer some to my neighbors,” the fisherman replied.

“So what do you do for the rest of your day?” Asked the businessman.

The fisherman said, “Well, I’ve usually caught my fish by late morning, so I go home, kiss my wife, and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap and read. In the evening, I go to the village to have a drink with my friends, play guitar, sing, and dance into the night!”

Being an entrepreneur, the businessman offered a suggestion.

“I have a PhD in business! I can help you become much more successful. From now on, you should spend longer at sea and catch as many fish as possible. When you’ve saved enough money, buy a bigger boat to catch even more fish.

From there, you’ll soon be able to buy more boats, set up your own company, build a production plant that will package the fish and control distribution, and move to the city to control your other branches.”

To this, the fisherman asks, “And after that?”

The businessman laughs, “After that, you’ll be able to live like a king, you will be rich!”

“And after that?” Asks the fisherman again.

“Well, then you can retire, move to a house by the ocean, wake up early in the morning to go fishing, then return home to play with your kids, kiss your wife, take a nap in the afternoon and join your friends in the village to drink, play guitar and dance into the night!”

Puzzled, the fisherman replies, “But isn’t that what I’m doing already?”

Be happy with the things that you have. Will having more in life bring you more happiness? Stress is often a choice. There’s joy and peace in simplicity.

Final Thoughts on Inspirational Stories

Some of these inspirational stories of success and hope left me astounded for a minute because of their strong impact, and I hope they had the same impact on you. They truly do make you think, and the images in your mind that they create are memorable.

Share these stories with friends who you think could benefit from the morals that they offer.

I’m hoping that from now on, when you’re tempted to cut corners, restrict your thinking to social conformity, remain comfortable with mediocrity, or anything else that may be holding you back in life, you will come back to these stories for a bit of a motivational boost.

And if you're looking for more inspiration, be sure to check out these other roundups:

• 15 Inspirational Poems About Life You Must Read Today
• 13 Famous Stories About Success & Overcoming Challenges
• 35 Best Songs About Success and Achievement

Finally, if you want to take your goal-setting efforts to the next level, check out this FREE printable worksheet and a step-by-step process that will help you set effective SMART goals .

Connie Mathers is a professional editor and freelance writer. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Marketing and a Master’s Degree in Social Work. When she is not writing, Connie is either spending time with her daughter and two dogs, running, or working at her full-time job as a social worker in Richmond, VA.

When You Write

Why Short Stories Are Important For Readers And Writers Alike

Do you remember the last time you were transported to another world, lost in the pages of a good book? Perhaps it was a novel that kept you up late into the night, or maybe it was a collection of short stories that left you wanting more.

Short stories may not get as much attention as their longer counterparts, but they can be just as captivating and impactful. In fact, they offer a unique set of benefits for both readers and writers, making them an essential part of the literary landscape.

For readers, short stories are a breath of fresh air. They provide a quick escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life, allowing you to immerse yourself in a new world and experience a range of emotions in a short amount of time.

Whether you want to laugh, cry, or feel a sense of wonder, there’s a short story out there for you. And because they’re shorter than novels, you can read them in one sitting, making them perfect for those moments when you only have a little bit of time to spare.

But short stories aren’t just good for readers – they’re also a valuable tool for writers looking to hone their craft.

Key Takeaways

• Short stories offer a quick escape from daily life and evoke a range of emotions in a short amount of time, making them perfect for readers with limited time.
• They are valuable for writers looking to hone their craft, allowing them to practice developing characters and creating a compelling plot structure in a limited amount of space.
• Literary techniques such as symbolism, character development, and well-structured plots can keep readers engaged and offer an extra layer of depth and meaning to the story.
• Short stories provide a refreshing break from longer works, while still offering plenty of opportunities for exploration, imagination, and discovery of new voices.

Benefits of Short Stories for Readers

Reading short stories is like taking a quick dip in a refreshing pool on a hot summer day – it offers readers a refreshing break from longer works, while still providing ample opportunity for imagination and exploration.

With shorter works, readers can easily fit a story into their busy schedules, allowing them to indulge in their reading habits without sacrificing too much time. Additionally, short stories can help with cognitive development, as they require readers to be more attentive and focused in order to fully grasp the plot and characters.

When reading a short story, readers are given the chance to fully immerse themselves in a new world and experience a range of emotions in a short amount of time. The brevity of the story allows for a more intense and concentrated experience, making it easier for readers to connect with the characters and their struggles.

Ultimately, short stories are an important part of any reader’s repertoire, providing a refreshing break from longer works while still offering plenty of opportunities for exploration and imagination.

Benefits of Short Stories for Writers

You can improve your writing skills by studying how authors craft concise and impactful narratives in short stories. As a writer, it’s important to understand how to develop characters and create a compelling plot structure in a limited amount of space.

Short stories allow you to practice these skills, honing your ability to tell a complete and satisfying story in a shorter format.

Character development is particularly important in short stories, as you have less time to introduce and develop your characters. By studying how other authors create compelling and memorable characters in a short amount of time, you can learn how to do the same in your own writing.

Additionally, short stories allow you to experiment with different plot structures, learning how to create tension and conflict in a limited amount of space. Through practice and experimentation in the short story format, you can improve your writing skills and develop your own unique voice and style.

Examples of Classic and Contemporary Short Stories

Now that you know the benefits of short stories, let’s explore some examples of classic and contemporary pieces.

As you dive into these works, you’ll have the chance to analyze the literary techniques used by the authors, discuss the themes and symbolism present in each story, and compare the different styles of different writers.

You’ll gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the art of short story writing as you explore these captivating tales.

Analysis of Literary Techniques

By incorporating literary techniques such as symbolism and metaphor, short stories have the power to transport you to different worlds and evoke strong emotions within you.

Character development is a crucial aspect of short stories, as it allows readers to connect with the characters on a deeper level. Through character development, readers can understand the experiences and motivations of the characters, and relate to them on a personal level. This connection can create a sense of empathy, making the story more memorable and impactful.

Another important aspect of short stories is the plot structure. The author must carefully craft a plot that is engaging and captivating, while also being concise enough to fit into a short format. A well-structured plot can keep readers on the edge of their seats, eager to find out what happens next.

Additionally, the use of literary devices such as foreshadowing and irony can add depth and complexity to the plot, making the story even more intriguing.

Whether you’re a reader or a writer, understanding the literary techniques used in short stories can enhance your appreciation for the genre and inspire you to create your own masterpieces.

Discussion of Themes and Symbolism

Themes and symbolism woven into a narrative can add an extra layer of depth and meaning, immersing the reader in a world rich with imagery and emotion. As a reader, you’re given the opportunity to interpret the themes and symbolism in your own unique way, allowing for a personal connection to the story. This connection can be powerful, as it allows you to relate to the characters and their experiences on a deeper level.

The use of themes and symbolism also allows writers to convey complex ideas and emotions in a concise and impactful way. By using symbols and motifs, writers can create a cohesive and meaningful narrative that resonates with readers long after the story has ended.

As a writer, incorporating themes and symbolism into your work can elevate your storytelling and make your work more memorable. It also allows for reader interpretation, which can lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of your work.

Comparison of Different Authors

When authors incorporate symbolism and themes into their work, they invite readers to compare and contrast their unique perspectives and interpretations. This is evident when reading different short stories from various authors.

For example, the influence of culture can be seen in Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’ where she explores the tension between African-American heritage and the modern world. In contrast, Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’ delves into the complexities of human relationships through the use of symbolism and language.

Furthermore, the use of language can also play a significant role in short stories. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies,’ her depiction of Indian immigrants in America is conveyed through the use of both English and Bengali. In contrast, Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ utilizes sparse language to convey the tension between a couple discussing an abortion.

By comparing and contrasting the various styles and techniques used by different authors, readers are able to gain a deeper understanding of the power of language and symbolism in literature.

How to Write a Short Story

Crafting a short story is like taking a journey through your imagination, where you guide the reader through a world of your creation. It’s a challenging task that requires you to create compelling characters and craft a captivating plot that will keep the readers hooked until the very end. And if you’re up for an even greater challenge, you could try writing your short story in a single day !

To start, you need to choose the right characters for your story. They should be relatable, interesting, and have flaws that make them human. You want your readers to care about them and be invested in their journey.

Once you have your characters, it’s time to craft the plot. Your story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. The beginning should introduce your characters and set the stage for what’s to come. The middle should be where the conflict arises and your characters are forced to confront it. And the end should bring resolution to the conflict and leave the reader satisfied.

Remember, a short story is a condensed version of a novel, so every word counts. Use descriptive language and engaging dialogue to keep the readers hooked.

With practice and persistence, you’ll be able to create short stories that transport readers to new and exciting worlds.

Resources for Short Story Lovers

For avid fans of the short story genre, there are plenty of fantastic resources available online to explore and discover new authors and their captivating tales. Whether you’re looking for book recommendations or online communities to join and discuss your favorite stories, the internet has it all.

Here are some resources to get you started:

• Goodreads: This online platform is a haven for book lovers, and it’s no exception for short story enthusiasts. Goodreads offers a wide range of short story collections and anthologies, along with user-generated lists and reviews to help you find your next read.
• The New Yorker: If you’re looking for literary fiction at its finest, The New Yorker is a must-read. Their fiction section regularly features short stories from established and emerging writers, making it a great place to discover new voices.
• Submittable: If you’re interested in submitting your own short stories for publication, Submittable is a user-friendly platform that connects writers with literary magazines and publishers.
• Reddit: The Short Story subreddit is a vibrant online community where readers can share their favorite short stories, discuss writing techniques, and connect with fellow enthusiasts.

With these resources at your fingertips, you’ll never run out of short stories to read and discuss. So why not dive in and see where the world of short fiction can take you?

By reading short stories, you improve your imagination, vocabulary, and empathy. You also get to experience different genres, styles, and cultures in a short amount of time. Plus, short stories are perfect for busy schedules, commutes, or bedtime reading.

They can inspire you, challenge you, and entertain you like no other form of literature. But reading short stories is not the only benefit. Writing short stories can also enhance your creativity, craft, and confidence. You learn how to condense your ideas, characters, and plot into a few pages, which requires precision and economy of language.

You also get feedback from readers and editors more quickly, which can help you improve your skills and find your voice as a writer.

And who knows, your short story might become a bestseller, a movie, or a literary masterpiece.

So, whether you are a reader or a writer, a fan or a beginner, a lover or a skeptic of short stories, give them a chance.

Recommended Reading...

Why do authors use short stories the advantages of this genre, why are short stories so hard to write understanding the challenges, what is a novelette exploring the short story genre, why are short stories better the advantages of quick fictional reads.

Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

© 2024 When You Write

• Future Students
• Current Students
• Faculty/Staff

News and Media

• News & Media Home
• Research Stories
• School's In
• In the Media

You are here

Softening the sharp edges in mathematics.

For everyone whose relationship with mathematics is distant or broken, Jo Boaler , a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), has ideas for repairing it. She particularly wants young people to feel comfortable with numbers from the start — to approach the subject with playfulness and curiosity, not anxiety or dread.

“Most people have only ever experienced what I call narrow mathematics — a set of procedures they need to follow, at speed,” Boaler says. “Mathematics should be flexible, conceptual, a place where we play with ideas and make connections. If we open it up and invite more creativity, more diverse thinking, we can completely transform the experience.”

“Mathematics should be flexible, conceptual, a place where we play with ideas and make connections," says Professor Jo Boaler. (Photo: Robert Houser Photography)

Boaler, the Nomellini and Olivier Professor of Education at the GSE, is the co-founder and faculty director of Youcubed , a Stanford research center that provides resources for math learning that has reached more than 230 million students in over 140 countries. In 2013 Boaler, a former high school math teacher, produced “How to Learn Math,” the first massive open online course (MOOC) on mathematics education. She leads workshops and leadership summits for teachers and administrators, and her online courses have been taken by over a million users. 

In her new book, Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity, and Meaning in Mathematics , Boaler argues for a broad, inclusive approach to math education, offering strategies and activities for learners at any age. We spoke with her about why creativity is an important part of mathematics, the impact of representing numbers visually and physically, and how what she calls “ishing” a math problem can help students make better sense of the answer. 

What do you mean by “math-ish” thinking?

It’s a way of thinking about numbers in the real world, which are usually imprecise estimates. If someone asks how old you are, how warm it is outside, how long it takes to drive to the airport – these are generally answered with what I call “ish” numbers, and that’s very different from the way we use and learn numbers in school.

In the book I share an example of a multiple-choice question from a nationwide exam where students are asked to estimate the sum of two fractions: 12/13 + 7/8. They’re given four choices for the closest answer: 1, 2, 19, or 21. Each of the fractions in the question is very close to 1, so the answer would be 2 — but the most common answer 13-year-olds gave was 19. The second most common was 21. 

I’m not surprised, because when students learn fractions, they often don’t learn to think conceptually or to consider the relationship between the numerator or denominator. They learn rules about creating common denominators and adding or subtracting the numerators, without making sense of the fraction as a whole. But stepping back and judging whether a calculation is reasonable might be the most valuable mathematical skill a person can develop.

But don’t you also risk sending the message that mathematical precision isn’t important? 

I’m not saying precision isn’t important. What I’m suggesting is that we ask students to estimate before they calculate, so when they come up with a precise answer, they’ll have a real sense for whether it makes sense. This also helps students learn how to move between big-picture and focused thinking, which are two different but equally important modes of reasoning.

Some people ask me, “Isn’t ‘ishing’ just estimating?” It is, but when we ask students to estimate, they often groan, thinking it’s yet another mathematical method. But when we ask them to “ish” a number, they're more willing to offer their thinking.

Ishing helps students develop a sense for numbers and shapes. It can help soften the sharp edges in mathematics, making it easier for kids to jump in and engage. It can buffer students against the dangers of perfectionism, which we know can be a damaging mind-set. I think we all need a little more ish in our lives. 

You also argue that mathematics should be taught in more visual ways. What do you mean by that? 

For most people, mathematics is an almost entirely symbolic, numerical experience. Any visuals are usually sterile images in a textbook, showing bisecting angles, or circles divided into slices. But the way we function in life is by developing models of things in our minds. Take a stapler: Knowing what it looks like, what it feels and sounds like, how to interact with it, how it changes things — all of that contributes to our understanding of how it works. 

There’s an activity we do with middle-school students where we show them an image of a 4 x 4 x 4 cm cube made up of smaller 1 cm cubes, like a Rubik’s Cube. The larger cube is dipped into a can of blue paint, and we ask the students, if they could take apart the little cubes, how many sides would be painted blue? Sometimes we give the students sugar cubes and have them physically build a larger 4 x 4 x 4 cube. This is an activity that leads into algebraic thinking. 

Some years back we were interviewing students a year after they’d done that activity in our summer camp and asked what had stayed with them. One student said, ‘I’m in geometry class now, and I still remember that  sugar cube, what it looked like and felt like.’ His class had been asked to estimate the volume of their shoes, and he said he’d imagined his shoes filled with 1 cm sugar cubes in order to solve that question. He had built a mental model of a cube.

When we learn about cubes, most of us don’t get to see and manipulate them. When we learn about square roots, we don’t take squares and look at their diagonals. We just manipulate numbers.

I wonder if people consider the physical representations more appropriate for younger kids.

That’s the thing — elementary school teachers are amazing at giving kids those experiences, but it dies out in middle school, and by high school it’s all symbolic. There’s a myth that there’s a hierarchy of sophistication where you start out with visual and physical representations and then build up to the symbolic. But so much of high-level mathematical work now is visual. Here in Silicon Valley, if you look at Tesla engineers, they're drawing, they're sketching, they're building models, and nobody says that's elementary mathematics.

Click to enlarge: A depiction of various ways to calculate 38 x 5, numerically and visually. (Image: Courtesy of Jo Boaler)

There’s an example in the book where you’ve asked students how they would calculate 38 x 5 in their heads, and they come up with several different ways of arriving at the same answer. The creativity is fascinating, but wouldn’t it be easier to teach students one standard method?

That narrow, rigid version of mathematics where there’s only one right approach is what most students experience, and it’s a big part of why people have such math trauma. It keeps them from realizing the full range and power of mathematics. When you only have students blindly memorizing math facts, they’re not developing number sense. They don’t learn how to use numbers flexibly in different situations. It also makes students who think differently believe there’s something wrong with them. 

When we open mathematics to acknowledge the different ways a concept or problem can be viewed, we also open the subject to many more students. Mathematical diversity, to me, is a concept that includes both the value of diversity in people and the diverse ways we can see and learn mathematics. When we bring those forms of diversity together, it’s powerful. If we want to value different ways of thinking and problem-solving in the world, we need to embrace mathematical diversity.

More Stories

⟵ Go to all Research Stories

Get the Educator

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Stanford Graduate School of Education

482 Galvez Mall Stanford, CA 94305-3096 Tel: (650) 723-2109

• Contact Admissions
• GSE Leadership
• Site Feedback
• Web Accessibility
• Career Resources
• Faculty Open Positions
• Explore Courses
• Academic Calendar
• Office of the Registrar
• Cubberley Library
• StanfordWho
• StanfordYou

Improving lives through learning

• Stanford Home
• Maps & Directions
• Search Stanford
• Emergency Info
• Terms of Use
• Non-Discrimination
• Accessibility

© Stanford University , Stanford , California 94305 .

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Your Health

• Treatments & Tests
• Health Inc.
• Public Health

Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

Is this some kind of joke? A school facing shortages starts teaching standup comedy

In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

Shots - Health News

Feeling artsy here's how making art helps your brain.

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

• handwriting

Female labor force participation

Across the globe, women face inferior income opportunities compared with men. Women are less likely to work for income or actively seek work. The global labor force participation rate for women is just over 50% compared to 80% for men. Women are less likely to work in formal employment and have fewer opportunities for business expansion or career progression. When women do work, they earn less. Emerging evidence from recent household survey data suggests that these gender gaps are heightened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Women’s work and GDP

Women’s work is posited to be related to development through the process of economic transformation.

Levels of female labor force participation are high for the poorest economies generally, where agriculture is the dominant sector and women often participate in small-holder agricultural work. Women’s participation in the workforce is lower in middle-income economies which have much smaller shares of agricultural activities. Finally, among high-income economies, female labor force participation is again higher, accompanied by a shift towards a service sector-based economy and higher education levels among women.

This describes the posited  U-shaped relationship  between development (proxied by GDP per capita) and female labor force participation where women’s work participation is high for the poorest economies, lower for middle income economies, and then rises again among high income economies.

This theory of the U-shape is observed globally across economies of different income levels. But this global picture may be misleading. As more recent studies have found, this pattern does not hold within regions or when looking within a specific economy over time as their income levels rise.

In no region do we observe a U-shape pattern in female participation and GDP per capita over the past three decades.

Structural transformation, declining fertility, and increasing female education in many parts of the world have not resulted in significant increases in women’s participation as was theorized. Rather, rigid historic, economic, and social structures and norms factor into stagnant female labor force participation.

Historical view of women’s participation and GDP

Taking a historical view of female participation and GDP, we ask another question: Do lower income economies today have levels of participation that mirror levels that high-income economies had decades earlier?

The answer is no.

This suggests that the relationship of female labor force participation to GDP for lower-income economies today is different than was the case decades past. This could be driven by numerous factors -- changing social norms, demographics, technology, urbanization, to name a few possible drivers.

Gendered patterns in type of employment

Gender equality is not just about equal access to jobs but also equal access for men and women to good jobs. The type of work that women do can be very different from the type of work that men do. Here we divide work into two broad categories: vulnerable work and wage work.

The Gender gap in vulnerable and wage work by GDP per capita

Vulnerable employment is closely related to GDP per capita. Economies with high rates of vulnerable employment are low-income contexts with a large agricultural sector. In these economies, women tend to make up the higher share of the vulnerably employed. As economy income levels rise, the gender gap also flips, with men being more likely to be in vulnerable work when they have a job than women.

From COVID-19 crisis to recovery

The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated these gender gaps in employment. Although comprehensive official statistics from labor force surveys are not yet available for all economies,  emerging studies  have consistently documented that working women are taking a harder hit from the crisis. Different patterns by sector and vulnerable work do not explain this. That is, this result is not driven by the sectors in which women work or their higher rates of vulnerable work—within specific work categories, women fared worse than men in terms of COVID-19 impacts on jobs.

Among other explanations is that women have borne the brunt of the increase in the demand for care work (especially for children). A strong and inclusive recovery will require efforts which address this and other underlying drivers of gender gaps in employment opportunities.

• Research and Publications
• Projects and Operations
• Privacy Notice
• Site Accessibility
• Access to Information
• REPORT FRAUD OR CORRUPTION

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Letter of Recommendation

What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

The 'most important mentor' ever: Chris Edley, legal and education scholar, has died

Christopher Edley Jr. was restless and impatient when working to expand access to education. He explained complicated concepts with clarity and often self-effacing humor. One former U.S. president remembered his brilliant mind and kind heart. Colleagues and students called him the most important mentor they ever had. 

Edley, a prominent civil rights scholar who held posts at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley and senior titles under some of the most prominent Democrats in the U.S., died Friday morning at the Stanford University hospital in California, according to his wife, Maria Echaveste. He was 71.

Doctors have not determined a cause of death, Echaveste said.

Many recalled the breadth of his impact across multiple disciplines.

“He was extraordinarily respected in the academy but also in public policy and public service circles,” said Ann O’Leary, an attorney and political adviser who helped him to establish a program for economic mobility called the Opportunity Institute. “He was able to comfortably debate a law review article and equally be in the halls of the White House or the state capitol to explain those really complicated ideas” about racial and social equity. 

Civil rights leader and legal scholar at Harvard, UC Berkeley

Edley, a Boston native and second-generation Harvard Law School graduate, co-founded Harvard’s Civil Rights Project following a court ruling in the mid-1990s that targeted race-conscious admissions. He taught at Harvard law and simultaneously worked on affirmative action for President Bill Clinton, advising the White House on leading efforts to retain race-conscious admissions. He remained at Harvard for nearly a quarter century.

Edley later served as law school dean at UC Berkeley for nearly a decade. Under his leadership, the school erected facilities, created centers and increased student grants. More recently, he oversaw Berkeley’s education school as an interim dean. 

As a legal scholar, he had an immense impact in education and especially in educational equity, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law. His leadership was “transformative,” said Chemerinsky, who was Edley's classmate at Harvard Law. Chemerinsky said he relied on the former dean’s advice in navigating the bureaucracy at the University of California. 

Edley held policy and budget positions in the White House under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

He served as assistant director of the White House domestic policy staff in the Carter administration, where his responsibilities included welfare reform, food stamps, child welfare, disability issues and Social Security.

He was a senior adviser to Clinton’s transition team and later worked as associate director for economics and government at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1995. In addition, he served as special counsel to the president and led the administration’s review of affirmative action programs.

White House stints starting early in his career

Edley held advisory positions in the presidential campaigns of Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Howard Dean, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. After the 2008 election, he helped advise Obama’s transition team. The two met at Harvard Law School, where Edley was one of Obama’s professors.

Edley met his wife, Echaveste, during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room while they were both working at the White House. She served as Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

"I thought he talked too much," she said, laughing. "He would say he knew more than everybody in that room."

She added: "He did not have ... that insecurity that some of us have when we're in those places, those questions of 'do we belong?'" said Echaveste, a first-generation Mexican American and the child of farmworkers.

'A journey that must continue'

Echaveste loved his "intellectual curiosity" and their debates about various topics. He was supportive of her career as a lawyer and political official. As they raised their children, they would discuss ideas in the car after dropping them off at school. "We'd look at each other and say how lucky we are."

But Edley, who was Black and whose father also attended Harvard Law before him, had a distinct view on what it meant to exist as a person of color in the United States. Despite his achievements, his father struggled to get a job after graduation.

Edley was often behind the scenes in Washington, but people in leadership took note of his ideas.

“Chris Edley had a brilliant mind and a kind, good heart that he put to use to build a better, fairer, more just America,” Bill Clinton said in a statement.

“From his groundbreaking academic career to his service in multiple key roles in my administration, he always believed that law and policy are ultimately about people," the statement said. "He mastered the minute details but never lost sight of the big picture – giving more people the chance to live their best lives. He is gone far too soon, but his legacy will endure."

Edley’s interest in civil rights underpinned each of his professional chapters. And he consistently endeavored to make scholarship “practical and immediately impactful on public policy and the debates of the day,” O’Leary said. O’Leary largely credits Edley with salvaging affirmative action in the face of resistance throughout the 1990s. 

Reflecting on the Supreme Court’s undoing of affirmative action last year and ongoing pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion, O’Leary said Edley understood that generational change requires a team of people.

"In some sense, he was impatient and irascible and never satisfied that we were doing enough – because we weren't doing enough. The way to honor him is to keep at this work,” she said.

“This is a journey that must continue.”