Sometimes the best way to punch kids in their brains is by making them think they’re breaking the rules.
Let me ‘splain.
My daughter Alysia teaches language arts at a high school in New Mexico. Not the old one – the new one. So to say being an English teacher only a few miles from the border adds an extra dimension to her job is an understatement.
Some kids have parents who live in Mexico, but are US citizens by birth, so they are actually bused across the border every school day. Regardless of the situation, they come to class with the same blasé attitudes and teenage malcontent as any other American kid.
So, Alysia wanted to engage them with a very current and edgy book titled Feed, by M.T. Anderson. Which is set in the near future and is told by a blasé kid who’s smart phone is embedded within his brain and all the social media and advertising is fed directly into his consciousness, 24-7.
Cool plot. But it needed parental approval since it got dicey with the language throughout… Due to the fact it was from a kid’s point of view.
This all came up because I had mentioned
Nope. Not enough sigs from the parents, so no cool book for the students. Bummer.
This didn’t slow them down much, as no sooner did those books become contraband, the majority were stolen from Alysia’s small repository. Sooner than later, kids were heard dropping lingo here and there and generally trying not to be null.
Case. Point.
Set. Match.
