The Butter Knife Bandit
I should totally be lesson planning and/or packing for WILKESBORO!!!!! right now, but instead I am come to tell you about how I got mugged in the middle of class today with a butter knife, and how my students did nothing about it. It was all an elaborate set-up of course. I had Dan come in to commit a crime so that my students could then write a police report about what they witnessed. So Dan comes in, looking all sinister in his striped polo shirt, and grabs me, holding a butter knife to my throat and demanding my purse, which is too heavy for anyone to want to steal. Then we went out into the hall, where our plan broke down entirely, and I ended up throwing myself on the floor as though I’d been pushed. Then Dan fake-kicked me a few times and ran off with my bag.
The students were…confused. They don’t know me well enough yet to know what a ham I am, and only a few of them know Dan at all, and he was clearly wielding a weapon, and yet I was giggling uncontrollably the entire time, so t hey didn’t know what to make of it all. Once they got that it had all been staged for the purposes of the lesson, though, I think they really enjoyed and appreciated it. And their writing was pretty good. Some article and preposition issues, but over all, not bad.
What was really funny was that one of them had a pen with Dan’s picture on it, so it was very easy for him to describe the perpetrator to the fuzz when they questioned him. He just had to hold up the pen and say, “This is the dude.” Only I haven’t taught them the word dude yet. Have to get on that. They’ll learn some more colorful words tomorrow when we do “A Boy Named Sue.”
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That is awesome! You’ve been doing some stellar lesson-planning these days because that is such a great activity. The only question I have is where did the pen with Dan’s picture on it come from? That’s odd.