A Storyteller's (and Teacher's) Challenge

Posted February 2, 2026

“Youth charges in with its own abundance, unpredictable and alive.”

by Prof. Suki and Suki Wessling, February 2, 2026

The KidsLearn Substack is written by Suki Wessling, known as “Prof.” Suki to her students. Scroll to the bottom for links to my classes, books, and podcasts. If you enjoy my work, please interact with this post. A “like” or comment goes a long way and will make my day!

I’ve been taking a break from writing regularly on KidsLearn as I am developing some other projects, but I wanted to drop a note about a wonderful teaching experience I had last year, which took a full year after that to come completely to fruition.

In 2024, a fellow writer and teacher at Athena’s, Valerie Estelle Frankel, approached me about an idea a small publisher friend had given her. She had been raving to him, as we do, about the amazing creativity of the students we teach. And he asked, “Why not publish an anthology?”

Valerie asked me to help out, and within months our class “Let’s Write and Publish an Anthology” was born. A slew of young writers joined us to learn about short story writing, editing, and the publishing industry. They were required to write all-new stories directly for the anthology, and they were involved in the process of coming up with a theme and fitting their own story into it.

The Storyteller’s Challenge

The students decided that the stories would be told at a village storytelling session—originally some of the students really wanted it to be a competition, but we teachers put a quash on that. The students ranged in age from 10 to 18, and we also invited some of our adult graduates to submit. There was no way we were going to pit a 10-year-old’s storytelling ability against an honors undergraduate studying literature! But we kept the positive part of competition: the challenge.

An old storyteller sees that her village, newly emerged from an epidemic that swept the region, needs new stories. She issues a challenge to storytellers far and wide and then invites the villagers to gather.

A Storyteller’s Challenge, now on sale at Amazon.com.

“We celebrate tonight,” the Storyteller said, offering a dramatic pause. For what—in a village exhausted from sickness, missing family members, seeing memories in the shadows of each corner—what could such a congregation celebrate?

“We celebrate youth,” she said, and then again, but low and deep in her abdomen, “youth.”

They were sitting at attention now.

“Youth we celebrate tonight, because youth by its very nature brings change. Youth may not know the past as well as we do. Youth offers its own perspective, its own outlook, its own youth, and its own stories. Youth doesn’t fear what is behind or in front. Youth charges in with its own abundance, unpredictable and alive.”

I’m ridiculously proud of the work that Valerie and I did. Each story in the anthology represents an achievement, and that achievement was no less for the 10-year-old than it was for the 20-year-old. It shows the interests, passions, and concerns of a generation of kids, all of whom suffered when important developmental time was spent in lockdown.

I am so happy that I reached out to my adult former students, whose stories showed impressive growth since they’d been kids in my classes. One of my most talented former students, Xan Geffert, is also an artist who designed our beautiful cover image.

On a more somber note, having a story in an anthology like this marks a person’s place in time. We have a public record of the beautiful, creative minds of people who will grow and change and someday leave us. My thoughts went in this direction because in a terrible tragedy, one of my former students was killed in an accident right before she submitted the final draft. I will never forget the mischievous spark that Violet Jensen brought to my classes. They were passionate, adventurous, and hilariously self-deprecating.

Middle grade fiction. Order links at www.SukiWessling.com/books

The Writer’s Challenge

We live in an amazing, terrible time that has never been worse or better for writers. On the one hand, the implosion of our media has been staggering. Publishing companies used to support a writer’s entire career; now they desperately seek the next big thing as their employers get sucked into bigger and more voracious conglomerates. Few writers these days make a living the way that Ray Bradbury did; he fed a family on his earnings from pulp fiction magazines before his first novel, and then for the rest of his life as a writer of note who never chased a trend. These days few writers are making a living from writing at all. We teach, we edit, we do magazine layout or work at a call center or write advertising copy—all jobs that are just moments away from being outsourced to AI.

But here’s the amazing part: When the original publisher stepped aside due to unrelated complications, Valerie and I (both experienced self-publishers) stepped in to arrange, design, and produce a beautiful thing that is now in the world. Each student’s words are on their families’ shelves, hopefully to be treasured for generations. Xan’s art is face-out for anyone in the world to enjoy. And Violet has memorialized her own trickster humor in a piece in which she shrugs at winning a battle with the demons that she worked to banish through her writing.

All of this happened because of the miracle of the modern world we live in: students met up and supported each other online; teachers collaborated without a moment stuck in traffic or drinking bad coffee in the teachers’ lounge; we exchanged ideas and inspiration instantaneously over great distances; and we were able to create a document of work that will outlast us all.
Doing good in a complicated world

Teaching children can never be ‘just a job.’ Every teacher is aware—and I hope that every teacher cares deeply—that their influence on kids can last a lifetime. For me, the anthology is a perfect example of what I’ve always tried to do as a teacher: inspire students through creativity, help them respect and enjoy the process of learning, and be satisfied with a job well done.

Every time a student tells me they are embarrassed about their old writing, I remind them that their writing is a snapshot of the younger child they once were, and they should be happy that they have now progressed so they can see the flaws. A Storyteller’s Challenge is a snapshot of each of these lives, all but one of them hopefully just beginning as they continue through the process of growing, learning, and finding their own way to contribute their copious talents to the human project.

Proceeds from A Storyteller’s Challenge benefit Athena’s Advanced Academy student scholarship fund. Athena’s serves an unusual group of students with special needs. Learn more at AthenasAcademy.com.