This is the second in a series of stories about my students. Of course, I’ve changed the names.
And this came after a unit on irony:
Stephanie, a pretty fourteen-year-old freshman, had just finished writing a paragraph for my class in the computer lab. These are the formulaic paragraphs that we all learned to write early on—the topic sentence, the three supporting sentences and those mechanical transitions—before we ourselves transitioned to more fluent prose. At any rate, when Stephanie went to the printer to retrieve her document, she found instead another student’s paragraph. Before I go on, I should tell you that Stephanie is at best a poor writer, and oftener than not, her work is incoherent. Stephanie picked up the paper she thought was hers and read. She read it again and began to giggle.
“Hey, Mr. Eggleston,” she called, “You gotta come read this paragraph. It’s so stupid! It don’t make no sense.”
I walked over and looked at the paragraph. It belonged to Brent, an unobtrusive, bespectacled boy who was not in the lab at the time. I was surprised to see that Stephanie had found one incoherent sentence on her own, but she was really taken by another line in particular. The paragraph was about a favorite holiday. Brent had chosen Halloween, and one of his supporting sentences offered this reason for his affection: “It brings out all the freaks.” Stephanie repeated it over and over convulsing with laughter each time.
Apparently the paragraph registered with her. She repeated the story in algebra, her next class, mocking the paragraph and berating its author to her friend Amy. Amy grew silent at the mention of Brent’s name. “Um. . . Stephanie. . . you know Brent is sitting right behind you?”
The next day the computer lab was booked by another class, and my class found itself typing away on a new paragraph in the library. At the end of the period I asked students to print their paragraphs and turn them in. Stephanie rushed over to me with an urgent question.
“Mr. Eggleston, I accidentally selected the wrong printer and printed my paragraph out on the computer lab printer. Can I go get it?”
“No, don’t bother,” I said. “Just print out another one here.”
“But I want to go get that one, before someone else sees it and makes fun of it.”
“That’s kind of ironic; don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but it's worse ‘cause that kid heard me making fun of him in algebra. I didn’t know that was him, and he sits right behind me! But it’s okay ‘cause I played it off. I was like, ‘I knew you was sitting there. I was just givin’ you a hard time. I thought it was really a good paragraph.’ Anyways, can I please go get my paragraph?”
And a quiet, unobtrusive voice replied, “You do know that I sit right behind you in this class too?”
And this came after a unit on irony:
Stephanie, a pretty fourteen-year-old freshman, had just finished writing a paragraph for my class in the computer lab. These are the formulaic paragraphs that we all learned to write early on—the topic sentence, the three supporting sentences and those mechanical transitions—before we ourselves transitioned to more fluent prose. At any rate, when Stephanie went to the printer to retrieve her document, she found instead another student’s paragraph. Before I go on, I should tell you that Stephanie is at best a poor writer, and oftener than not, her work is incoherent. Stephanie picked up the paper she thought was hers and read. She read it again and began to giggle.
“Hey, Mr. Eggleston,” she called, “You gotta come read this paragraph. It’s so stupid! It don’t make no sense.”
I walked over and looked at the paragraph. It belonged to Brent, an unobtrusive, bespectacled boy who was not in the lab at the time. I was surprised to see that Stephanie had found one incoherent sentence on her own, but she was really taken by another line in particular. The paragraph was about a favorite holiday. Brent had chosen Halloween, and one of his supporting sentences offered this reason for his affection: “It brings out all the freaks.” Stephanie repeated it over and over convulsing with laughter each time.
Apparently the paragraph registered with her. She repeated the story in algebra, her next class, mocking the paragraph and berating its author to her friend Amy. Amy grew silent at the mention of Brent’s name. “Um. . . Stephanie. . . you know Brent is sitting right behind you?”
The next day the computer lab was booked by another class, and my class found itself typing away on a new paragraph in the library. At the end of the period I asked students to print their paragraphs and turn them in. Stephanie rushed over to me with an urgent question.
“Mr. Eggleston, I accidentally selected the wrong printer and printed my paragraph out on the computer lab printer. Can I go get it?”
“No, don’t bother,” I said. “Just print out another one here.”
“But I want to go get that one, before someone else sees it and makes fun of it.”
“That’s kind of ironic; don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but it's worse ‘cause that kid heard me making fun of him in algebra. I didn’t know that was him, and he sits right behind me! But it’s okay ‘cause I played it off. I was like, ‘I knew you was sitting there. I was just givin’ you a hard time. I thought it was really a good paragraph.’ Anyways, can I please go get my paragraph?”
And a quiet, unobtrusive voice replied, “You do know that I sit right behind you in this class too?”
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