"Trouble Every Day"

I thought about entitling this week's Blog "Heavy Shit Happens", but decided on a Frank Zappa song title instead. Maybe that's how I dealt with emotions that seemed overwhelming when I was a teen, by putting on a little Zappa… it still kind of works for me.

I read Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan. Four students kidnap their hard-ass English teacher to scare him; but because of his medical condition, the teacher has a heart attack and dies. The kidnappin' and the killin' are done by the midpoint of the novel, and the remainder of the book is spent on the students rationalizing and covering up the accident. Despite their efforts, the evidence is gradually uncovered and they're arrested. To me this book is not so much about violence, but about teens' not considering the possible consequences of their decisions and actions. The possible connections that could be made to this theme seem easily applicable.

What else is good about it? I thought the chapter showing the teacher's conversation with his wife would be quite thought provoking for students. I don't think most students understand their teacher's sacrifices and misinterpret their intentions. I suspect this would be an eye-opener for many. The teacher's wife vividly resonates the author Lois Duncan's own experience of having her daughter abducted and never found to create a character that's scarily authentic and massively guilt provoking for the other characters. The book also ends in a very open-ended fashion, suggesting that the characters may never be able to put this experience behind them.

The book's been criticized for portraying a helpless female protagonist who's seduced by the four student into acting as bait to lure the teacher out of the building by requesting a conference with him after school. I thought her situation seemed more reflective of the realistic hierarchy of power that the popular, attractive, upper-classmen would have over a nerdy, bespectacled, underclassman. Male or female, if the cool kids invited you into the fold, could you resist doing something stupid to gain their approval?

I have to tell a couple of quick stories about heavy shit. I used to run a writers/poetry club where I'd share published authors' works, and we'd talk about writing and do some writer's workshop activities. Two girls hung around after we were finished, and one of the girls insisted that I read a poem that the other girl was reluctant to show me. I read it, and it was sad and depressing and not very interesting, but I tried to be encouraging in my response. The girl who had insisted that I read the poem shook her head and said to me, "Mr. Fisher, she's thinking about suicide." Thank goodness, she had a friend willing to bring this to my attention because I was a complete dumb ass in recognizing it myself. I figured I'd share that to illustrate how unprepared some of us are to handle any bibliotherapy. I referred her to a counselor and she got the necessary attention by working with some other students in a group (and a bit more attention from me as well).

H. S. Story #2: I'm in the middle of 3rd period, teaching something absolutely earth shattering like how to label parts of speech in a sentence, and the Social Studies teacher from the classroom next door burst in to say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and that we were going to war. I figure the old guy's finally gone nuts, calm everybody down with "I'm sure we'll find out what's going on." It's a country school, so no live TV, just Channel One recorded news. Eventually somebody sends the school a copy of a videotape and it's shown on the network, and we learn about the second plane. At that point, it's definitely time to say, 'screw parts of speech.' Students stayed in that same class until lunch time, and we just calmly talked our way through things: "Yes, I wish it was just a horrendous coincidence that two planes crashed… Well, some people around the world hate Americans… Why do they hate us? Good question, umm... Actually the CIA keeps track of hundreds of terrorist organizations… We'll just have to wait and see, but Mr. Price seems pretty sure we're going to war…" After lunch we attempted to resume business as usual, but many more questions were answered.

I really like the Miller article in the course pack and where it eventually took us, but I'll wait until class to share. Later, YA Bloggers!