The Story Behind The Heirs of the Medallion

In the summer of 2010, I was engaged by the school district in Center, CO to teach creative writing in a five-week summer school for a struggling group of middle schoolers. I had a class of 60 students, consisting mostly of children of immigrants from Mexico. At that time, the community had a large number of single-parent households, and the population struggled with unemployment and poverty.

I use my extemporaneous stories to teach creative writing, but for this program I was specifically asked to incorporate the following principals into my narrative: the importance of verbal tradition, the importance of family, the importance of character and integrity, and the importance of cultural heritage.

Each episode of the story was repeated four times a day to sections of 15 students. My daily narration ended with a cliff-hanger and the individuals in the class were given paper and pencil and asked to use their imaginations to write an ending. After a slow start, the kids became increasingly invested in the story, almost against their will. As a result, their ideas, word use, imagery, problem solving, and writing vastly improved.

At the conclusion of the summer school, I was asked to put on a theatrical presentation to the entire community and these formerly reluctant students were overtly enthusiastic to participate. With no time to write a script, I narrated and different students pantomimed episodes from the story. I was assisted by one of the school’s full-time teachers. A resident of the community for 35 years, he told me he had never seen such an engaged group of kids and adults at a Center School presentation.

Every episode was outlined in my computer and ten months later I began converting these outlines into books.

The Heirs of the Medallion is the expanded version of that tale.