Accidental Lessons

Interview with author David W. Berner

by Randy Richardson

If you live in Chicago, there’s a good chance you’ve heard David W. Berner. Over the last twenty years, he’s had stints as a reporter and anchor on Chicago news radio stations WMAQ and WBBM. The odds are not so great that you’ve read Berner. But soon his words may be as familiar to Chicagoans as his voice is.

Earlier this year, Berner came out with his first book, Accidental Lessons: A Memoir of a Rookie Teacher and a Life Renewed, a memoir about his later-in-life experiences teaching at an Aurora school plagued by many of the problems that face inner-city schools: gangs, drugs, illiteracy, broken families, and poverty. Berner, whose own life difficulties thrust him into the new midlife career as a teacher, found that there was a lot he didn’t know. While he was teaching, he was learning. These Accidental Lessons helped Berner heal from his own life wounds. “That year changed me and my outlook,” Berner said, “and although the book can be categorized as a teacher’s story, it’s much more than that. It’s the story of self-discovery, of finding a new beginning, and of learning life lessons in places you never expected to learn them, and from people you never expected to be doing the teaching. I think the story resonates with all of us, any of us, who have struggled to find our place in the world.”

Q: Tell us about your background as a Chicago radio journalist and how that has helped or hindered your writing career.

I came to Chicago in 1988 to work as a reporter/anchor at WMAQ radio. It was an all news operation and that had been my background, after a couple years, believe it or not, of being a disc jockey on a country radio station in Pittsburgh. I got into the news business after simply being asked by a program director, “Can you do news?” I worked as an anchor, reporter, and eventually became a news director. I then worked as a senior writer for 18Global, a web-based golf editorial site out ofSouth Africa. It was a fascinating and fun job. But didn’t last. It crashed and burned with a lot of the other dot-com’s in the 1990s. I then moved into freelance work, then teaching, and continued work as a reporter at WBBM Radio. Still work there occasionally today. How has it helped or hindered my writing? It’s helped because it’s made me work very hard at getting the facts of a story, getting to the truth, especially when I’m writing creative non-fiction. But it’s also hindered for the same reason. In daily broadcast work the writing is very much about the details and facts, and less about the nuances or back story. At first, flushing out a story for a book was hard. I had to really work at interior monologue, for instance. I had to find the places to expand on the story, giving it context and detail. It took some time.

Q: Tell us about the events that led to your writing “Accidental Lessons: A Memoir of a Rookie Teacher and a Life Renewed.”

I had gone through a number of life changes – divorce, death of my father, new jobs, no job, and a feeling of losing my place in the world. In desperation, really, I applied for a scholarship program that would allow me to get my graduate degree and a teaching certificate as long as I agreed to teach in a troubled school district for a period of time. I got the scholarship, and the story unfolded from there. The year-long teaching position in the East Aurora school district is the basis for Accidental Lessons. That year changed me and my outlook, and although the book can be categorized as a teacher’s story, it’s much more than that. It’s the story of self-discovery, of finding a new beginning, and of learning life lessons in places you never expected to learn them, and from people you never expected to be doing the teaching.  I think the story resonates with all of us, any of us, who have struggled to find our place in the world.  The book began with some simple requests. Everyday when I returned home from the classroom, my sons would ask me to tell them stories about what I was experiencing at this school. Their interest prompted me to keep daily notes on my experiences and thoughts. Those notes eventually turned into the book.

Q: Why did you decide to tell your story?

I thought it was a universal story. Was it terribly unique? Did I swim the English Channel with one arm tied behind my back? No, of course not. But I think that’s why the story resonates. It’s a story many of us could tell, and certainly relate to. When I’ve been at readings or appearance events, one of the things a lot of people say to me is — “I’ve been there.” The authenticity of the story, the real-ness of it, I think, hits close to home for a lot of people. Plus, I always wanted to write a book length story. I thought I had the narrative, I just had to get at it.

Q: I presume that there are some parts of the story that were not easy to relive. How difficult was writing a memoir? How long did it take you to write it? What were the biggest challenges for you?

You have to be willing to dig deep, sometimes into dark places, uncomfortable places, to tell an authentic memoir. You have to be unflinchingly honest about yourself. That’s hard for anyone. And you have to be committed to that approach. The reader will sense if you are being timid or too reserved. That’s the worst that can happen. If the reader thinks you’re holding back on them, how can they believe anything you say? Also – there is an incredible responsibility when writing memoir. Yes, it’s your story, and it’s your recollections, and that’s empowering. But you are bringing the lives of others into your story and that is a big responsibility. You want to be honest, but you also want to be fair. I changed the names of a lot of people in this book, one character is a composite character because I didn’t want to single them out. Now, for some, those p