# 18 questions to ask your stepparent about their school days

School is the first place a person is seen by strangers. These questions get the teacher who was feared, the one who noticed, the game in the playground, the day they left and whose decision it was. Ask what the house was like the first week they lived in it. You will learn something about your family that only an outsider could see.

1. What did school smell like, sound like? Which teacher do you still think about?
2. How did you get to school each morning, and how long did it take?
3. What did you eat at school at midday, and who did you sit with?
   Who they sat with at eleven is the first friendship chapter.
4. Which teacher was feared, and what did they do to earn it?
   A feared teacher is a villain the reader will enjoy.
5. Which teacher noticed you? What did they say that you still remember?
   One adult who saw them is often the hinge of the early chapters.
6. What was the subject you were known for at school?
7. What could you not do at school, no matter how hard you tried?
   The thing they could not do is often the thing they spent a life making up for.
8. What was the punishment at your school, and did you ever get it?
9. What did you wear to school? Who made it, and who had worn it before you?
   Hand-me-downs are a family economy in one garment.
10. Tell me about a day you skipped school. Where did you go instead?
   The first truancy is the first choice they made alone.
11. What was the playground game everyone played, and were you any good at it?
12. When did you leave school, and whose decision was it?
   The leaving date explains the next twenty years.
13. Did you ever win something at school? What did your parents say when you told them?
   The parents' reaction is the real answer.
14. What did you do in the last week of the summer holidays, before school started again?
15. Did anyone from your class become famous, rich or notorious? What were they like at twelve?
16. What did you learn by heart at school that you can still say?
   Ask them to say it. Recorded, it is a page by itself.
17. What did your children wear to school in the 1970s, and what did they beg you for that you would not buy?
18. Who was the bully, and who stood up to them? (tender: ask once, late, in person)

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com