Education

MAYBE IT WAS TOO MUCH OF A TEACHABLE MOMENT

September 28, 2005 1 min read
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When elementary school teacher Pigs talks about being accident-prone, she’s not kidding:

This lesson was about grabbing your reader's attention at the beginning of a piece of writing. We had covered the usual dialogue, sounds, and description....I had moved into action. My kids are heavily into tetherball when the temperature allows us to go out to recess, and I thought it would make a pleasing example for an action beginning. I should have stopped with the writing of the beginning, instead of the acting out of the serving of the tetherball.
I tossed the ball high into the air," I dramatized, acting as though I was throwing the ball up, "I pulled back my fist," I continued with great emphasis on my facial expressions as I drew my fist back, "and I POUNDED the ball into a dizzying spiral!" I concluded with exquisite form and vigorous follow through as I laid waste to my imaginary tetherball... That was when I heard a questionable sound and felt a sneaky little pinch up in the 'ol ball and socket region.
I threw out my shoulder teaching writing. Is that not the most nerdtastic injury ever? ... It was in pursuit of the highest degree of teaching! I did it for the kids, after all.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, check out what happened to her off school grounds just days later.

(From A Series of Inconsequential Events.)

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.

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