A fractured hip, thongs (the Australian kind) and a two-hundred-dollar analog camera. These were just three of the topics that were featured in seven students’ stories during the BHS Story Hour, a writing program modeled after The Moth storytelling radio hour, on Wednesday, April 15 in the MLK room.

Run through the Whipple Writing Program, the program was funded by the Gladstone/Whipple family in honor of their late son and alum, David Whipple. Jen Martin, Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator and program director for the Whipple Writing Program and Evan Mousseau, English teacher and adviser for the program, led the night’s presentations. Each year, Story Hour utilizes the high school’s 5 mantras as central themes for the stories. This year, stories were centered around the final mantra: “Every student is a scholar, citizen and caretaker.”

The student writers, freshmen Hannah Li and Amelia Lo Proto; sophomore Diego Liteplo; juniors Selena Charbonneau, Jeffery Dong and Liv Klawiter; and senior Gus O’Rourke, wrote a wide range of stories. These included amusing anecdotes (at times the whole room was filled with laughter), to moving personal pieces where more than a few were left in tears.

As an audience member and mother of one of the student speakers, Erika Anderson said that she resonated with Dong’s story about how he blamed his parents for his own self-pressure to be a “scholar,” leading to a struggle to reconcile their broken relationship.

“The one Jeffrey told, because of his honesty and vulnerability, I thought, was extremely moving. I think as a parent, I connected to it really well because it was easy to understand the disconnect between parents and teenagers,” Anderson said.

Li wrote about her experience as a “caretaker” for her mother after she broke her hip. Li said the experience of writing with a group was different from a typical class environment because of the collaborative aspect.

“I really love the experience of writing with everyone, because everyone is really interested in writing here, they all have really great ideas and they give amazing feedback,” Li said. “The difference between writing in a class independently is, it’s just yourself. There is no help. It’s just you.”

Other stories included Klawiter’s story about developing a relationship with her senior neighbor who was also a former civil rights attorney, Liteplo’s lesson in learning to accept help in his freshman year advanced math class, Charbonneau’s record of gaining responsibility during a wayward trip to the mall with her sisters, Lo Proto’s tale of a language slip-up after moving to America from Australia and O’Rourke’s narrative about discovering a passion for film photography after he accidentally purchased an expensive analog camera.

Li said that despite it being her first time storytelling, turning her initial idea into a polished draft was mostly straightforward. However, she did run into some struggles while putting together her story.

“I struggled with actually trying to assemble things in a storytelling order. Because a lot of things happen, and if you just say them the way they happen, it’s not really a story. So that was challenging, trying to piece together. It was like a puzzle,” Li said.

For Mousseau, who has been advising the Whipple Writing Program for the past five years, the event was a goodbye. Mousseau is moving away later this year, though he plans to stay throughout the duration of the 2026 Whipple summer programs.

Mousseau said that he was both happy and sad to be moving on from the program. He was the one who originally pitched the high school’s mantras as themes for each year’s stories. Now, with “every student is a scholar, citizen and caretaker,” as the final mantra theme across six years of running the program, he said he feels good about completing the project and is proud of this year’s group of students.

“It’s bittersweet. I’m really, really proud of the work that the storytellers [did]. I’m proud of them every year. This year was a remarkable group. I think all seven stories were just fantastic,” Mousseau said.

Looking back on his experience, he said that the program was the first time he felt a sense of belonging in the Brookline community.

“I’ve lived in Brookline the whole time that I’ve worked at the high school. It wasn’t until getting involved in this program, meeting the Whipple family and working really closely with the families and students in this setting in this community, that I felt like it wasn’t just that I was a teacher at Brookline High School, but that I was a part of the Brookline community,” Mousseau said. “The feeling of connection to the community of Brookline that this has brought me has been the most rewarding and powerful thing about it.”