Education Matters: Booker High School’s Commitment to Story

By Ryan G. Van Cleave 

When John Timpe and his family moved to Sarasota, he sought job opportunities where he could help students develop as writers. After all, that’s what he did for nearly a decade as a teacher at the University of North Florida and he found it profoundly rewarding. Then in 2016, he learned about Booker High School’s Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) programs along with their principal, Dr. Rachel Shelley, and her commitment to quality writing and effective storytelling.

“High school students have important stories to tell,” she explains, “and, often at this age, they honestly just need that outlet. Writing gives students voice to their dreams and doubts, and it encourages them to share their views and ideas.”

With a principal so in line with what Timpe hoped for—and a $58 million state-of-the-art facility that features first-rate dance, art, and digital design studios—he accepted a fulltime teaching position there that started in early 2017.

Timpe’s years of editing and writing for the Tampa Bay Times and the Florida Times-Union served him well since the initial opportunities he found at BHS were journalism electives and general writing courses, where students needed to learn how to write clearly and effectively in order to pass the statewide FSA exam. But soon enough, Timpe was asked to support the Digital Film & Motion Design program through teaching screenplay writing.

“It’s all about developing scenic narrative as opposed to summary narrative,” he explains about the difference between writing screenplays versus, say, what’s often found in a short story or novel. “My goal is to help them understand that you’re showing and not telling. This format of creative writing is fantastic for that. It’s also great for developing empathy.” Indeed, students who try creative writing quickly learn that so much of life is beneath the surface. What a great lesson for an entire generation—there’s more to every situation than what meets the eye.

A number of the students in the VPA programs already love writing—thanks, in large part, to Booker Middle School’s beloved creative writing teacher, Joanna Fox, who created the incredibly popular creative writing class she calls the “Dragonfly Café.”

Timpe proudly says, “I have a Dragonfly Café mug on the shelf in the room where I teach film and screenplays.”

Many of Fox’s students go on to BHS and want to continue to express themselves in writing. While the VPA program doesn’t yet support a creative writing program, the students are finding writing and story-making opportunities aplenty regardless.

A little over two years into his career at BHS, two-thirds of Timpe’s classes are now screenplay writing, and one-third journalism and other creative writing electives. That suits him well since he subscribes to Golden-Age-of-cinema filmmaker Billy Wilder’s idea about the importance of story. “Eighty percent of a motion picture is writing,” Wilder claimed.

Stories are deeply embedded in our culture. They help us build strong relationships. In many ways, one might argue that people rely on the power of stories on a daily basis far more than, say, trigonometry.

That interest in effective storytelling is translating into student success, such as the number of Digital Film & Motion Design program graduates who end up going to college, including one student who attended FSU’s film school. A student who took one creative writing elective for fun—and then got hooked on writing stories—is now working with Timpe on a screenplay as a senior honors project.

And most recently, there are the four seniors in the Digital Film & Motion Design program who wrote and created Into the Storm, a documentary that played at the 2019 Sarasota Film Festival and was considered “the most buzzed-about film” at the festival. The full-length film tells the story of the 1966-67 Booker High School Tornado basketball team, perhaps the most dominant sports team in Florida history, as well as how desegregation forced BHS to close for three years and led to a student uprising. Folks with ties to other film festivals are talking to the program about adding the much-heralded Into the Storm to their own events.

“This is the first year where students have produced a feature-length documentary,” Timpe explains. “We might not come across the same situation every year. Sometimes you need an hour to properly tell a story, and some years it’s told best at 20 or 25 minutes.” Part of being a good storyteller is recognizing the organic shape and size of your material and how best to convey it to an audience. That’s one of the many skills Timpe and his counterpart Lori Burton and adjunct instructor Chandler Howard are emphasizing.

One of the biggest challenges that so many teachers face is how hard the students can be on themselves. Timpe says, “They come in and see peers who are really talented, and they tell themselves, ‘I’ll never be able to do this.’” At BHS, the teachers work hard to stop a defeatist attitude and replace it with an empowering work ethic. “There’s no lightning strike from the heavens that imparts the gift of story on you,” Timpe adds. “The truth is that it’s work. You get up and grind through it even when you’re not feeling it. But incrementally, over time, it gets done.”

When this past school year started, there were 42 students total in the Digital Film & Motion Design program, with only 4 seniors. The film part of the program was just added three years ago, and so they’ve only recently had four full grade levels operating at one time. While the interest in that program will surely grow thanks to the success of Into the Storm, the practical restriction of limited workstation space cap it at 20 students per grade level.

The number one thing Timpe thinks others should realize is that the students at BHS are often overcoming challenges before school every morning that most of us couldn’t believe. Despite all that, their work with stories is a gift that shows students new ways of looking at themselves and the world. It informs who they are and what they’re capable of. It’s a way of living that insists one pay attention, ask questions, and engage.

“It’s hard to pin down just one item that I’m most proud of when it comes to our students and the stories they create,” notes Dr. Shelley. “Our Booker students are such thoughtful, natural writers.” Timpe furthers this thought, saying, “What they’re learning about writing is preparing them for a better future. That’s an exciting thing to be part of.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Booker High School, please visit sarasotacountyschools.net/schools/bookerhigh or call 941.355.2967.