So It Goes

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. So it goes. Up until two weeks ago, I considered him my favorite living author. Now, he joins the ranks of the brilliant writers who have left behind a literary legacy. Vonnegut has played a large role in my life. In high school, Cat's Cradle was my favorite book. For my sophomore year term paper, Slaughterhouse Five was the text for which I slaved tirelessly. (Oh, to be back to the days when a ten page paper was the longest, most grueling essay of my life.) In the past six months, in the nonexistent free time that I have, I've devoted my leisure reading time to a collection of Vonnegut's short stories as well as his memoirs. When I worked at the Mark Twain House and Museum, I worked on an exhibit for Vonnegut's wife, Jill Krementz, who specializes in photographing writers at their craft. The opportunity allowed me to see all sorts of publicly unseen pictures of authors in their homes, most of which still have not been released - including (SEXY ALERT!) Vonnegut in states of undress.

After returning from spring break, it was my intention to screw the regular curriculum and teach Vonnegut to the next generation, refusing to let them forget him. As it turned out, only two out of about 150 students had even heard of him in the first place, so my job turned into finding a way to make them know about him in the first place.

I chose to teach the story "Harrison Bergeron" because it's good, it's relatively short, and there were pre-existing lesson plans that I found on the internet. It would be exaggeration to indicate that the lesson went excellently, but it went pretty well. More students read the text than usual and were intrigued by it. Actually, a lot of them found it "stupid," but once we discussed that this story was an example of satire (and, of course, explained what that meant), they realized that it was the world that was being described that they found stupid and not the story itself. That was an essential hump to overcome, but once we got there, I think I had them.

To complicate the assignment further, I assigned each of the students two different "handicaps." Some students couldn't read, others couldn't understand unless ideas were represented visually, others had to lie on the ground in order to think, and still others couldn't spell. In small groups, the students had to work together to accommodate for each other's disabilities and answer comprehension questions on the text. It was a ridiculous spectacle, but work was being accomplished, so I couldn't complain.

But wouldn't you know it? The principal dropped in. Ey came in and looked puzzled as one student was sprawled on the ground, another was doing toe touches, a third was shouting answers, and a fourth had eir sweatshirt over eir face. The principal walked up behind my highest achieving student who at the moment was unable to spell. When the principal made a face at the glaring inaccuracies, the student simply said, "I have a spelling deficiency." Though it was organized chaos, I'm not sure it read as that to the administrator. Ah, but if I haven't been fired yet, I'll probably be okay.