The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Stories After School by Madelyn Peters Olson

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Stories After School by Madelyn Peters Olson https://www.amazon.com/Stories-After-School-Madelyn-Peters/dp/1649579438 In this memoir, Madelyn Peters Olson shares stories and reflections from her fifty-year career as a teacher. Mrs. Olson, one of several teachers in her family, writes about teaching in Iowa and has been described as “a storytelling teacher” by many of her students. Her stories feature memories and musings on different teaching styles, parenting and motherhood, and child development and will appeal to readers who are interested in memoirs about education.

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We're probably going to have 3,000 episodes this year. Should be some interesting things, and as long as a bus doesn't hit me and run me over, there will be more more on shows. There's probably some other things that can happen to me, but we'll just, we're not going to, we're not going to invoke any sort of potential it might have my cursing it by mentioning any of the any of the any of the things that can happen but you probably all seen those movies one of those one movies where everyone gets killed really badly in them it's a there's some sort of fate thing anyway uh that's not

this movie folks go to good reason icom for it says christmas hey all all all uh all my improvs on the on the on the enrol can't be funny that's just the way it is folks linkedin dot com fordious chrisvaz youtube dot com for chestchis christmas facebook dot com for it's christmas but i promise issue, there'll be more funny jokes to come in the show. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Faw Show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not endorsement or review of any kind.

Today's featured author comes to us from books to lifemarketing.co.com. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book success. Today we're an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her hot new book called Stories After School. out on paperback April 7th, 2021 by Madeline Peters Olson. She was a 50-year career teacher. And as everyone knows, my mom and sister were teachers.

And I love teachers, not just because they're my mom and my sister, but because they do so many glorious things to the world. And they help lift it and improve it, make it better. And, you know, I've seen people come up to my mom and go on about how wonderful she was and how much they changed your life. and sometimes kind of funny. She has the bad kids that she didn't like in school because they were kind of rotten. Come up to her and tell her how they decide to be better.

And she's like, wow, I thought you'd be in prison by now. No, she doesn't say that. Anyway, moving on. So we're going to get talking with Madeline. And Madeline had a childhood dream of becoming a teacher. She made a reality. Classed her for 50 years. Welcome to this show.

Madeline, how are you? I'm good. Thank you. You like my funny stories or my lame stories? You can pick either one of teaching and all that stuff. You had that happen where you've sometimes had people come up from the teaching and see you as adults. And you're like, that kid made it. I do.

I do. And it is amazing. I'm so glad that they'd made it. Truth be told, that's what most of my teachers think when they see me an adult. Huh. People, what is possible? Anyway, so Madeline, give us any dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

I'm on Facebook under Madeline rolls. So give us a 30,000 overview, ma'am. What's in your new book? I just have stories that I gathered through all my years of teaching. I didn't use the students' real names, but they would know who they are book. But I have been a storyteller in the classroom all my life, And my grandson is the one who said, Grandma, why don't you write a book?

And I said, oh, I could never do that. He said, I think you could. And he bugged me enough that I finally took advantage of the pandemic. He'd go anywhere. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to write a book. And I just sat now at the computer and typed and typed and typed and typed. Storytelling, we like to say on the show, is the owner's been it to life.

It's a, there was in Africa, there used to be the end. ancient griots who would be the human keeper of the stories of the tribe in the lore of the tribe and all that sort of good stuff and they would have to keep in their heads because it wasn't you know the rainforest it's a little hard to write down stuff on paper tends to get wet and uh i don't know what they did when the when a lion ate the librarian but uh you know what happened in the history of a thing well we only know what happened the last 20 years because someone ate some lion ate that thing. But this is a beautiful in telling stories and stuff, and Coho was such a great time. So would you call this a memoir of your history and experience?

I probably know it was a memoir until I took a book to a bookshop in Iowa City. She read it, and she said, this is a wonderful memoir. And that's the first time I really had thought about it being called that. And, well, it's a story of your life. Now, does it span your whole life, or is there maybe more books coming that are pieces, or you probably have an, amount of stories being a teacher. In fact, your mom probably could write a book too. I've had many teachers say that they have so many stories too. And they call all, they could all write a book. They all stories. I pay my teachers not to write a book because I don't want them telling stories about me. I was a Gen X or so I was lucky enough to live in the age where no one knew

what you did when you were younger. Unless it's on the criminal docket somewhere, but I don't have that either. So I got that going for me. And at his story once speaking of criminal back, I was substituting for long period of time, and it was with kids who were school dropouts and, you know, a local place. And all of a sudden, one of them said, Mrs. Olson, I see you got a speeding ticket, and he said, what?

And he says, yeah, and he said, how do you know that? And he says, oh, you can just look up all that stuff in the criminal activity online. So how much less are you going, then you should have? was like, oh, cool. Oh, wow. That's all you need because they're going to use it against you. Anytime you're telling them to follow the rules, like shush or, you know, don't, don't disturb

the class or chew gum or whatever. I don't know what they do nowadays. They look at their phones, I guess, nowadays. And they go, well, you don't follow the rules. Exactly. You're Mr. Olson. This is a, Miss Folonia Speeder. Yeah, it's funny how kids are.

But, you know, you probably live through a really interesting time of teaching. and probably saw a lot of challenges. Can you tease out maybe a little bit of some of the favorite stories in the book that you like? You know, not too much because people got to buy the book to really find out how they end stuff. Gosh, there's too many. Maybe this one. I was teaching a clothing class, 17 kids. 12 were regular kids.

Five were either foreign exchange students who didn't speak English or one guy. There was one guy in a class. And I think he enjoyed all the females around him. But anyhow, he was making a five-piece camouflage outfit because he was a hunter. And he was doing a good job. But at one point, I saw him sitting down, this feet up on the counter, and I said, Jay Bird, what are you doing? And he said, I'm following the pattern suggestions.

And I said, what do you mean? He says, come see, Mrs. Olson. I went over. Sure enough, there was a picture of a cup of coffee and said, you've done well so far put up your feet and have a cup of coffee yeah and it's oh my goodness and my name being mrs olson you probably aren't old enough to remember there used to be mrs olson who advertised bulgers coffee he left him he said mrs olson

where's my coffee Jimmy never has a second cup in elementary grade remember that I remember that I must have seen that thing 50 trillion times that was one effective that was one effective things. And then one day I tried Folgers. I think.

I didn't drink coffee either, so I was Mrs. Olson who didn't drink coffee. Well, yeah. That's fun. Mrs. Olson with coffee. Yeah, it was like, it was always like, Johnny never drinks my coffee. I asked for a second cup at home.

It's like way didn't, we just make a whole mess of women feel really, guilty and shamed, just go over coffee. I mean, what kind of advertising were you doing here, people? Of course, I don't know, maybe they do worse now on makeup shows. Well, what, how were you raised? What inspired you to become a teacher? What was the motivation there?

My grandmother, who would be at the late 1800s, she would have a teacher. She was a math teacher, high school math teacher. My mother taught in country schools, so she had grades K-through-8, all in the one room. you know, building and had to teach all of them. Holy crap. My sister, older sister, was a teacher. And so I grew up in a family of teachers. But I always wanted to teach.

From the time my little mom said, I used to line my dowels up, and I had a chalkboard, and I'd make worksheets for them, and I'd make them behave. And, you know, she said, who doesn't remember me wanting to do anything except that? Yeah. They knew you really want to be a teacher when you wrap them on the knuckles with his ruler. Pull the hair out on some of them. Bad sign. No, I think only nuns do that.

So I don't know. Chris Voss is picking on nuns and the Chris Foss. Those are nice people. I'm sure they're nice. I've heard that they're not too fun at school. But, you know, that's not my gig, so we're not going to worry about it. Did someone need to convince you to write your memoir? Or was this, you know, COVID?

Like my grandson. No, really? Yeah, I used to. call him to basketball practice and football practice and stuff. And I would tell him stories in the car. He said, Grandma, you should write a book. And I said, no, now I could never write him. And he just kept at me.

And then during the pandemic, he and I had the same schedule, same free time. And so he used to come in the room where I was subbing for nine weeks. And we could take our masks off then because it was just he and I. And he said, I think you should write a book. Hence, then when we were left out of the school and everybody had to stay home, that's when I did it. Were you guys staying isolated, being folks are a little older and, you know, didn't want to pick up that COVID? I did. I was, I stayed. And I was at school subbing, wearing a mask. Were you really? Wow. That's crazy. You know, I just stayed home as much as they could. It took me about four years to finally get COVID.

And I'm glad I waited because it just about killed me. That thing was evil. And that was the four-year watered-down redition of it. Yeah, it was like, it was like just trying to drown me. It was like leaving a spiket on flowing into your lungs 24-7 and rolling over in bed and half my bed was covered and used sniffle sheets or tissue. And I just looked at all. I went, is there that much fluid in my body still? I mean, it was.

but yeah, that's, I was doing everything I could to keep it out of my lungs. I'm like, if this goes in my lungs, I'm going to be up on a vent. But, I don't know, maybe it would have better at 2026. Oh, and weird over here. So, how long did it take you to write the book when you started? It didn't take very long at all because I think most of the stories were already in my head, you know? And I just went and made a list, put the person's name with one or two words so I would remember the story. So it might be like Chris crazy.

Bad student, Chris. Never does his homework. And I just went through the list and just started typing. So it's, you know, kind of random. That's the problem I had with my first book. When I wrote it, I told all my stories. And it's really great because there were the stories I'd told all my life. And so it was really easy.

I just told my stories. And the second book, I'm like, oh, crap, I put all the good stories in the first book. What I got now? World. All the world. I agree. I view you. But, you know, I mean, it's great. I don't know about you, though.

I've forgotten all the stories that I put in the book. I used to walk around for 30 years telling people my stories. And then now I don't tell them those stories anymore. I tell them different stories, but newer stories, I guess. But any time I say like, hey, what about that one story you had? I'm like, I don't know. It's in the book. Go buy and read it.

I don't even remember how it goes anymore. Because once I wrote it down, it's... That was it. Yes. Anymore. What was how was your, there's a question here someone submitted. Was your venture into writing public knowledge? Not sure what that means.

No. I don't think anybody expect me to write a book. Okay. And I didn't tell anybody I was. Well, it was a book. What's something on Facebook had a picture of the book and said, I'm so excited. I've published, and my friends and family were like, what?

But, boy, did that sell books. Well, they wanted to buy them to find out if you said something about and about it. That's why I make a monthly stipend payment to all my teachers so that they never write a book. Because I don't want the truth getting out on me. What a horrible studio. You know, fun fact, I don't know if you find this to be true from your end of it, But some of my favorite teachers, I figured out early on that for me to graduate high school, I needed 54 credits. I needed 26 credits to graduate high school.

But if I took everything they gave me, it would be 54 credits. And I'm like, why am I doing double the work when I'm going to graduate? Now, I was a stupid kid from a poor family. I knew I was going to have a Pell Grant going to college. Harvard wasn't going to be letting me any time soon. Probably never should. I don't know. Maybe they should now.

But so I went to my teachers that I didn't need their classes. And they start asking me, they're like, how come you're not doing anything? You're just kind of just sitting in the class. You're not doing anything. And I said, well, I figured this math out. And I'm going to flunk your class. And they're like, what? You're going to flunk my clay?

So they all decided, it was kind of interesting. Well, one decided, and then they used the other ones to talk and I'm into it. They all kicked me out of the class. And they go, we're just going to mark you here. And we don't want you in your class. because it's just offensive for you what you're doing. But I'm going to mark you here and you can go do something for an hour and a half. It was a block time.

But a lot of the teachers that I learned from that flunked me, I really respected and I like. To this day, they've had an impact in my life. And I really enjoyed their classes more when I wasn't focused on learning all the stuff and doing the things. I think I actually learned more. So I don't know.

I mean, like I, some of my teachers would probably think I hated them because I flunked their class. I actually really loved them and enjoyed them. And it was for their character and how they were such great at teaching and delivering. I don't know. Do you ever hear from any students? I do. I'm thinking of several. One time I was at the grocery store and one of the students was always his mom who I'd never met. And he said, Mom, I want you to meet Mrs. Olson.

She's the best teacher I ever had. And I'm thinking, what? kids was all? I don't see my mom do that in the grocery store. She said, I never thought that kid would me. I were. Yeah, why is he free running around? Shouldn't he be in prison somewhere?

You're right. You see his parents? Anyway, you know, my mom lived through the time where it used to be when, you know, and when I was growing up, where if you did something bad in class as a kid, you know, or talk back to the teacher or vice president or teacher. Yeah. And then somehow it changed over that period of her career to where now it was the teacher's fault that the kid was a horrible, a little demon. Yes. And meanwhile, you're looking at the parents going, yeah, I think I know where this found springs from. I know. I believe 95% or more of what a student is is because of his parents.

Yeah. It really became a thing where, you know, teachers were expected to become the parent. Like, you need to take care of the kid and raise him, you know. We're just, we're just dumping him at school and hoping, I don't know, he figures all out. Meanwhile, we're going to go watch the Kardashians and, I don't know. Yeah, those are the parents that hated snow days because then they had to take care of. Maybe they hate their kids. I don't know. I'll speak for myself, but, you know, it seems like it's a real absentee parenting thing.

And then the whole onus to, you know, when kids see that mom and dad are going to blame the teacher instead of giving themselves accountable. It's kind of weird how the world worked out. Now we just have this whole world of victimhood competition people who try and be the most persecuted. What kind of emotions did you feel as you wrote the stories? Oh, I cried for some of the stories. I laughed with some of them.

I had the whole gamut of the emotions. Not bad, going through these times and putting all the details down. And I've heard that from some people who, ordered the book from me and then came back to tell me things about. They said, I cried, I laughed, you know, I wanted more. You know, I was waiting for more of this story. And I was glad that they had the same emotions that I did. That was a good sign.

Mostly people to read my book say it gave them incredible cramps and indigestion and diarrhea. Yeah. Same a diarrhea for the punchline in there. Johnny Carson-style joking. So the other question I had for you was, what kind of other responses have you had about the book? I guess people loved it. I mean, it's, you know, if I were you, I'd go find the,

I'd go find the graduation. You know how on Facebook you can find out who graduated when and what year and then you can find all the people in that group? You should market that book to those people that were in your classes. See, you should have kept, see, you should have thought of this 50 years ago. should have kept like a list of everyone's email, right? And then that way when you publish your book, you can send it out.

And you can just send like, were you a bad student or a good student? Find out, buy my book. That's the FAA perfect. Find out with Ms. Olson thought of you all along. And maybe you can, maybe here's an idea for a follow book. You can interview the bad kids that you thought would never make it. And maybe they, maybe they did something good with their life like I did. they can

I'm just assuming I did the jury still out I guess we gotta see how the movie ends but basically you know you could be like and it could be a show

called how the hell did you save yourself something like you know and you just interview like how did you go from that little kid who was

you know ADD like B OCD and you know banging his knees on the desk and as you know I was one of those

drummer kids you ever one of those drummer desk drumers in your in your class? My son was one. Was he?

I used to drive my teachers mental with it. And I have severe ADHD still at this point. And yeah, my teachers would, I think my psychology teacher wanted to cut off my hands or something. I would make him angry. I didn't mean to.

I would just be bored. Thinking about 50 million things at once. And yeah, I think he wanted me, he probably wanted me in a straight jacket during his his his learning up of class. But, you know, I, I, did I have any bad teachers? I had one bad teacher, yeah. I think I had one bad teacher. He was,

he was not a nice feller. I think there was another guy. Did you ever have like any of those, we used to have this one teacher in junior high who had a big paddleboard with holes drilled through it? Do you ever have run like that? Well, you were a nice teacher, man. Yeah, it worked for him for, I don't know, about a decade or so. And then one day, you broke some kids' hand slamming it down on the table and the hand moved. That was the end of his career.

But, you know, it's great that you were able to teach without violence, threats of violence. I remember one time some students said to the principal, I behave in her class because all she has to do is look at us. Say a thing, just look at us.

No, we need to shave us. never had to raise my voice. Give them that look. I used to do that with a teenager. I sued a stepdad once. I'd just give them this look like, did that really come out of your mouth? Yeah.

You want to think about that? And they would have this look on their face like, did I say that? You know, because they're just figuring themselves out as teenagers. They say all sorts of stupid shit. And they'd have the time, if they're good kids,

they look at them, they kind of, you kind of point out, and they're like, yeah, I don't, I just still trying to figure this out. So,

I had one kid when I was subbing at the middle school level. He came in, he started walking on top of the desks. Really? Where people's books are supposed to be and just, and it's throwing stuff around. And I said, get out. What do you mean? I said, get out. And where am I supposed to go?

I said, I don't care. Just get out. He said, you don't want to be here, so I don't want you here. So he left. And I found it later. He sat right outside the door. You know, never said a thing. But after the class, half of the kids went by and said,

thank you, Mrs. Olson. Oh. So they wanted some order. Sometimes, you know, I learned that with my huskies. Sometimes the best punishment a mom husky or dog will do to her puppy. He's kind of alienated it for a little bit and ignore them. And that's the worst thing for a little puppy. But that's how they learn sometimes.

So, you know, that's probably better than the paddle. Maybe it's a less thing you remember that, you know, if you don't behave well in society and blah, blah, blah. You said you did a lot of years or decades as I can't remember which, as a substitute teacher. Sometimes kids really like to give substitutes a hard time or play games with them. Do you have to do with that? They try. Because I'm a storyteller, I even collected a book of jokes. Story jokes.

And I had them labeled my book like, this is for me. math classes for English, this for history. And I always started the classroom with a short story. I got their attention. They saw that I was, you know, a fun person. I never had trouble subbing. Oh, you just took right over and said, here, I'm leading. The next time I'd be in one of the classes, do you have a story to tell?

So, I mean, I know they appreciated it. I mean, that's really what we use stories for education. I call it the owner's manual to life. We use stories to entertain. And that's, you know, if you can entertain a small room of rambunctious kids who were trapped in there between resources, especially the boys. You know, it's fun. But yeah, it's the, I mean, I can still remember,

I wish I could remember their names, but I can remember all their faces. I know who they were, you know, so-and-so in psychology, so-and-so in my English class. And, you know, there were people that had, an indelible effect on me because of their skill as a teacher, but also their character. You know, there were some teachers I got on the bad side with because I was a bad kid, and sometimes I get caught with my girlfriend at the auditorium by my theater teacher.

He used to get really angry about it, but, you know, you get caught there too many times. He'd get really angry, but I still had a lot of respect for him as a teacher. I realized there was a difference between why I was being punished, and I knew what I was doing was against his rules. But, you know, my, my girlfriend was hotter than his wife. So, no, I'm just kidding. Just being a shit. No, but it's funny, you know, there's a lot of teachers that probably if I met them today,

they would be like, yeah, I didn't like you as a kid and you were an awful kid. And I'd be like, you know, I really, I know that. I know you thought that because I was pretty an awful kid. But I still really respected you. And you made a difference in my life. There are times that I think about the difference you, life. So it's kind of interesting. I mean, teachers, teachers have such a way of indelibly imprinting at a very young age to people. And they, they change the world. I mean, there's so many people

that have great stories about teachers that changed the world that impacted them. You know, there's some teachers that are saving a life because the child doesn't eat at home. There's abuse at home. There's issues and stuff. And, you know, teachers do the greatest thing. I think we need to invest more in teachers and quit buying bombs. and F-16s, but that's just me, I guess. I'm agreeing with you. Yeah, teachers shouldn't have to do a yard sale, school drive, selling chocolates. I will say that.

We shouldn't have make sales too. Yeah. I remember one time I called my mom. You know, I own companies on my life, so I think in a business expenses sort of way, and I called my mom, and she's like, yeah, I just came home for the craft store, spent $250 there. I got this really cool setup. I'm going to build for my students.

she did elementary school. And I remember saying to her, I go, well, it's a good day, let you expense that. And she goes, no, no, no, I don't get reimbursed for that. It's out of my pocket. I'm like, well, what? What? And yeah, I mean, that's something that is just a shame that we don't take better care

of teachers and students. And, you know, I watched her over the time that she was a teacher where they were doubling her class size and then making the room small. Yeah, yes. And, yeah. So anything more, maybe I should ask you about the book to tease it out before we go. I don't know what it would be. Well, that must be why we got all the questions out.

And thanks, William. Great man, great voice. This is the book. And William, grab her book as well. You can order on Amazon. There'll be a link on the show after the show. So thank you very much, Mellon, for coming the show. we really appreciate it.

Give us any dot-coms and social media. You want people look you up to get to know you better and follow up your future books. I just Facebook is all I'm on. Well, thank you very much, Benal. I advertise your show on Facebook this morning saying I was going to be on this afternoon and you can't believe the number of people

that were excited for me. Just be yourself and you'll be fine. And I mean, your name is out there. We try and, yeah, there's a few people. Boy, we've got millions of downloads. So, yeah, we've been doing this for a little while, like one or two episodes or something for 1,700. Well, thank you, Madeline. It's been an honor to have you, and I'm a big fan of teachers, so I'm glad we did get you on the show.

Folks, pick up her book, wherever fine books are sold. Stories After School out April 7, 2021, and watch for future stuff. Hopefully we'll get more stories out of Manolin. And maybe I think you should just do a book of called The Bad, kids exposed. Make it racy, you know, kind of give it that link bait sort of title or I pull the curtain back from all the bad kids. And then what you do is before you publish, you call the bad kids and go, hey, I have your story here. And how much you want to pay me not to publish it? You know, unfortunately, it'd be a very thin book. Oh, well, I think you're a great teacher.

I mean, you must have inspired a lot of people. Use my bad. are teachers that we'd have all the bad stories because you never wanted to be nice to them because they're mean. I remember my driver's license teacher was mean. Like he just yelled and barked us the first day. He even told us when you're never going to pass the thing. He was like a drill sergeant. I was like, I'm not going to pass my driver's license thing. Then screw you. And I was the one that got screwed. So the worst teacher I ever had was my student teaching supervisor. I learned how not to teach. Oh, really? Yeah. So was a good thing, that advisor or a bad thing?

Probably. Probably it was good. She showed me how I did not want to be. Let's do it. Oh, by her example. Is that what you mean? Oh, okay. Yeah.

I've had that happen where people teach me what not to do by antithesis or what to do by their antithesis of their bad behavior. So that's why, you know, follow the good and rule. Anyway, thank you very much, Madeline. Thanks for honest for tuning in. Go to Good Reefat. dot com, fortunes, Christus Christfuss, LinkedIn.com, Forteous, Christfuss,

Chris Foss, one on the TikTok, getting all those crazy places in the net. Be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You'll be listening to the most amazing and television bond. The kid of your brain and your life. Or,

I mean too much of the Chris Lancho podcast to lead to people taking you're smarter, younger, your resistible, then film and regularly moderate mouths. She's the different person for you lead. Is this too. Thank you.