A few student stories:

[ennierda]

In a good vocab lesson a few days ago, the kids picked up the words and started riffing and making with them: Ms. Cardone, can you DEFER our quiz? You wouldn't want to become our ADVERSARY! Maybe we could have a PARLEY about it? Quiet, you VERMIN! (one kid to another kid, not me to the kid.) Guys, we need to TRANSCEND all this

Comments

[megasus4]

Satire is shockingly difficult to get across. I improved the percentage of kids who understood it when I started showing a (heavily and sloppily edited) episode of South Park, and last year I had a good bit of success using some Onion articles. After all that, probably only about 20% of the students thought "A Modest Proposal" was serious. In my first couple years, I couldn't get over half of them to understand it.