The most classic Sabotabby nightmare ever

[sabotabby]

I was assigned to teach Grade 12 Applied English. I had 50 students in my class. The assigned novel study for the year was Atlas Shrugged.

I was dismayed at first, then realized that I could make the curriculum subversive by deconstructing the text. But then I remembered that the book was a million pages long, and you had to pretty much read novels aloud to get Applied kids to read them, and the kids would never sit still long enough to participate in a critical analysis.

Comments

[the_axel]

1000 pages distilled into 1000 words. What could be better?

[sabotabby]

He had seen someone do the act before and fail and, after a single try at six months old, he was better at mockingly bursting through doors than anyone on the planet.

OH GOD, IT'S BEAUTIFUL!

You call it a nightmare ...

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

... I call it the most hilarious dream ever (or at least, since that Simpsons dream I had back in my boozecan days, when that woke me up laughing and almost saw my writing the script on spec.

I especially like the implication that your kids would have sat still for the book itself, just not for the critical analysis.

[sabotabby]

Hah, I don't think they would have in the dream either, let alone in real life.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

You may laugh, but one of the assigned books in my English 12 course (regular English, not applied) was Anthem (which also inspired Rush's album "2112", gick) .
That was over 30 years ago.
I wonder who gets to pick these things....

[sabotabby]

I do wonder. I should know the answer, being a teacher and all, but the assigned reading list doesn't come from the ministry guidelines. As far as I know, there are a bunch of books in the school, and you're encouraged to use those so that the school doesn't need to buy new books. But every so often, a teacher will manage to get something new on the reading list, which is why some of our Grade 9s get to read Little Brother.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

You do know you can get Little Brother as a free eBook, right?
Though I'm surprised they are allowed that book. The protagonist consumes habit-forming substances and admits he likes it, has sexual intercourse with someone he hasn't married...oh! my stars!

[sabotabby]

You do know you can get Little Brother as a free eBook, right?

Yep, but that is not convenient for schools that lack computers.

Though I'm surprised they are allowed that book.

Well, the teachers who put it on the reading list are our sorts of people. And parents seldom make complaints at my school, because that would involve reading the books that their kids aren't reading.

[auralarua.livejournal.com]

So, I talk about you irl to my s.o. all the time and you were in one of HIS dreams the other night. He said he dreamed that he got home from work and there was a bomb squad in our house and they had found tiny bombs planted in the wiring above our ceiling fans. They said that "Sabotabby" did it and he said that apparently we had run afoul of your good graces somehow. Not much to the dream but so weirrrrd. I howled with delight.

[sabotabby]

That's kind of rad. But I wouldn't do that to you guys, of course.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's... wow.

My own teaching nightmare pales so much in comparison that you can use it for sketching paper.

(It was the night before my first midterm; I dreamed they all failed it. Yes, that's right---I transferred the standard student anxiety dream, intact, to the other side of the coin.)

[sabotabby]

Oh yes, I've had anxiety dreams about the kids flunking too. But mostly my anxiety dreams are about overcrowded classrooms with no lights and the kids rioting just as the principal walks in.