The dispatcher is the character/thing that informs the hero that there is a problem to be solved. I think this is very straightforward, and the exercise leads the student through the concept very nicely.

In Real Life :: If you are reading this, you are by definition a parent or teacher or a parent-teacher, and that means that you have the desire to be the hero for someone. You want to help your student overcome the obstacles to learning, and prepare and educate them. But what happens if you don’t know there is a problem? When I was homeschooling 3 at once, it was fairly common for kiddo number one to come running in to where I was with number two, to tell me that the third was struggling with math. Without them telling me, I might have just gone on reading to #2, and #3 might have gotten more and more in the weeds with arithmetic. Not a super exciting A0V, but a real one to that #3, who was, in this case, the princess who needed a hero to rescue them from the (in their eyes) villain of math (or perhaps, ironically, me for assigning it). Child #1 played the very important role of dispatcher.

Who acts as the dispatcher in your child’s story or life? Have them think of a specific problem they have, and who helped solve it. How did that person know to help solve it? The dispatcher could be many different people, and could even be the hero themselves (say, a friend who saw they were sad and themselves did something about it). But often it is a third person or thing that sees or finds out about an AoV, and lets someone know who then decides to solve the problem, and becomes the hero. Help them also see the moments when they were a dispatcher (and feel free to dispel any sense that tattling is, in fact dispatching, which it is, in fact, not). This is a valuable role in a story, a valuable role for those who are in need of a hero, and for those who want to be a hero, but don’t know where the problem is.

Finding it in the Story :: pg 232 :: this is an easy one. Scurvy Spat acts as the dispatcher in alerting the Captain, soon to be the hero of the princess of the Kanadien ship. Again, keep checking throughout the story for these kinds of mini-stories, and you’ll find lots of these character function/roles being played out (and help your student note that individual characters might have different functions in different mini-stories).

Tags: Character Functions, Dispatcher