Business Profile: Melody Fleming, Teacher delves into funny business

Public Record, The, Oct 12, 2004 by Kleinschmidt, Janice

Melody Fleming carries a large briefcase, the kind lawyers carry to court. But instead of documents, Fleming's briefcase yields a feather boa, a red clown's nose, bubble blowers and a rubber chicken.

Fleming is not a lawyer.

For the past 21 years, she has taught school in Mecca for the Coachella Valley Unified School District. But her briefcase contents are not intended for children. They're meant for grownups. Fleming is trying to teach adults the importance of laughter in their lives. Through her company, Laffing Matters (she's not concerned with teaching adults to spell), Fleming offers her services as a speaker and promoter of "laughter therapy."

Growing up in Los Angeles and graduating from U.C.L.A., Fleming always liked theater. But she Got a degree to become a social science and English teacher and earned a master's degree in educational administration. She took theater courses for fun. However, she says, "I did almost did get a master's in theater," and she traveled with an improvisational group for children. Later, she became a high school drama teacher at Coachella Valley High School.

Fleming began her career in education teaching sixth grade in Las Vegas, Nev. "Then I was wooed away by an offer to be the first female sales rep for Cross Pens," she says. "It was twice the money and time for travel and adventure."

She moved to Boston, where she headed up a national sales promotion for Cross Pens. However, as a California native "thrown into snow and ice," facing the challenges of being among the first traveling business women (when men thought women alone in a hotel restaurant were there for other reasons, she says) and lonely away from family, she wasn't entirely happy with the job. During a visit with family in Los Angeles, she heard about an opening at Sunset Magazine. "I walked in the office off the street and waited three hours to talk to the sales manager," she says. Within a week, he called and offered her a job as a marketing representative. After a year on the East Coast, she was ready to return to California.

When her parents bought a second home in Rancho Mirage, Fleming began visiting them on weekends; she "fell in love with the valley and didn't want to go back." She lined up another sales job, but it didn't start right away, so she considered taking an interim job as a substitute teacher.

"Since I had been out of teaching for so long, I never dreamed I would get back into it," she says. Regardless, she applied to be a substitute teacher for Palm Springs Unified School District around Thanksgiving time. The school district asked if she would be interested in teaching third grade for the rest of the year. Although she had not taught children that young before, she said OK. Then she was told the job was in Thermal.

"I pictured cracks in the earth with nothing growing," Fleming says. "So I went out and I just saw this beautiful country and date groves and citrus groves, and it was fabulous for a city girl." When she was asked to come back the next year, she said yes.

Since then, Fleming has taught grades 3 through 12, as well as summer college classes at Cal State San Bernardino. She received training at U.C.L.A. and in San Francisco to become a trainer in an educational forum called Tribes, designed to establish a secure environment where people feel free to open up and share their creativity without the fear of put downs. She taught 25 to 30 adults - mostly education professionals of different ages and nationalities. "A lot of time was spent laughing," Fleming says. "By the end of the third day, everyone is bonded so closely that they demand a roster [of participants] to reach everybody, and they wanted reunions."

Subsequently, Fleming hit upon an idea during a visit to the Oaks at Ojai when she realized speakers at the spa stayed for free. "I put together a talk to give at the Oaks so I could stay and not pay," she says. It was based on the Tribes interactive workshop. "So much laughter came out of the room that people that were not planning to come would come in," she says.

Next, Fleming offered "Lighten Up and Live Longer" at a trischool-district day at La Quinta High School. She set a maximum of 30 people for each of three sessions, and people were turned away after the first 30 entered the room. The door was closed and Fleming gathered materials to hand out. When she turned around, another 50 people had entered the room. She had never given the presentation to more than 30 people, but decided she couldn't turn away the class-crashers.

"How am I going to start 'Lighten Up and Live Longer' by yelling to people to get out?" she reasons.

Her next step was to contact the editor of Desert Woman and request an opportunity to speak at one of the newspaper's teas. "From that tea, I got about six or seven invites around town to speak at different women's clubs," she says.

Although she would like to retire from teaching and extend Laffing Matters presentations to spousal groups at conventions, teaching leaves her with little time and energy for marketing. She joined the American Association of Therapeutic Humor, primarily composed of doctors and nurses, through which she has met many people with life-threatening illnesses who believe it was laughter that pulled them through.