Columnist Susan Snyder: Instructor leads a storied life

Friday, March 23, 2001 | 9:37 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Most teachers with doctorate's degrees are found in college classrooms rather than kindergarten ones.

But the doctor is in at Las Vegas' Clyde C. Cox Elementary School.

In seconds, Rochelle Wallace Clark can make people forget all about "Dr. Clark" as she assumes the role of a curious possum or slips into the shoes of historical characters such as renowned black educator Mary McLeod Bethune.

Clark is a storyteller, by desire and profession. She tells stories for birthdays or weddings or funerals. She tells them to teach history or values. She sets aside some time every single day to tell a story to her pupils.

And on Saturday Clark will spin a tale -- or two or three -- for anyone who cares to listen. The free presentation is at 11 a.m. at the West Las Vegas Arts Center, 947 W. Lake Mead Blvd.

"I've always thought it's just something you do because my mother always told us stories," the 43-year-old teacher said. "My mother had a story for everything."

Clark does, too. She knows hundreds of them. She began telling stories to her remedial reading pupils soon after she started teaching 23 years ago. She had several classes each day and ended up reading the same tales over and over.

"Pretty soon, I would just start telling the story," Clark said. "As a teacher, you're always competing with TV, music and other media. So I used voices."

At graduate school Clark discovered storytelling was considered an art form. So she immersed herself in it through classes and storytelling festivals. She even wrote her doctoral dissertation about how teachers can use oral tales to help students learn about writing, reading, history and even science.

"In science the basis is inquiry and hypothesis," Clark said. "As you think back to your own schooling, who were your favorite teachers? They were those teachers who used stories."

Clark says at-risk students are among those who benefit most from this age-old art. Students who enter the classroom with a bad attitude lose it pretty quickly when she launches into one of her tales. A favorite is the one about the possum and the snake:

The little possum is a busybody who pokes his nose into everyone's business. He becomes enamored with a snake that's trapped under a rock in a deep hole. Even though his parents have warned him that snakes eat possums, he cannot help himself. He thinks he has befriended the snake, but in the end it eats him.

"You see what happens when you mess with something you know you shouldn't be messing with -- like drugs or cigarettes," Clark said. "It's a way of teaching values and rights and wrongs without preaching."

Her selections on Saturday will be traditional African-American tales. But Clark's repertoire spans cultures and generations, as do many fable themes.

For instance, she says, in American Indian stories the coyote is the trickster. That same role is filled by a spider in West African tales and by Brier Rabbit in African-American stories.

"The details are different, but the morals are the same," Clark said. "It's a strong vehicle to teach, entertain and heal."

Lucky little kids, those Cox Elementary School kindergarteners.

The doctor is in.