Pointless

On Wednesday my students are going to be learning about meeting reader expectations--structuring their papers so that one thing logically leads to the next, so as to not confuse readers. Editorgirl, who, as per Lunkwill's advice, I love unconditionally and not because of her wonderfulness, and whose name I simply cannot uncapitalize at the beginning of a sentence, passed on a wonderful idea that she used when teaching a similar concept to her English 115 students. The idea is that you do something completely random--she played a movie clip, I believe--and then go on with your lesson without explaining. You finish your lesson, say goodbye, and let your students wonder for two days if you are insane or if you were just trying to kill time. Then, the next class period, you ask them why they think you did that random thing. They talk about it, express confusion, and that's when you reveal that you were making a point: if you throw something in your paper without explaining it or tying it into something, you're confusing your reader.

So today I stopped in the middle of my lesson, played "The Last Trumpet" by Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truthspeaker, then continued with the lesson. While the song played I stapled some papers to hand back. I couldn't look at the students' faces. I fought the urge to giggle, could hardly hold the stapler still. Here's the problem: I am a being of order. Logic holds my world together. Random acts of insanity simply are not me. And now I suspect my students think I'm weird. Weirder even than they usually think I am. And it drives me crazy to let them go on thinking that until Wednesday. And what about the students who don't come on Wednesday? They will go to their graves thinking that I'm some disordered guy who randomly plays new age political rap songs in the middle of class for no good reason. They will point at me on Judgment Day and hold me responsible for their lives spiraling into chaos.

And I will point to editorgirl.