Day 24.

Today the sun rose only to cast shadows onto my soul. In the darkness of my day I remember nothing of the light, and in the darkness of evening I stumble over the remains of my earlier hours. Each moment I exist is a crumb of time in my ultimate present, and what memories will be crafted into a hazy vision of the past. I present here, those crumbs.

I gave fifth period homework. I have never had a more neutral class. I don't believe they enjoy the work, however I usually get more resistance. I feel as if I could have asked them to build a time device and travel backwards to save the bison and they would have committed to it. However they would ask only that I give them until Tuesday to finish. I will find something to rattle them. Later.

Sixth period began research on historic student Supreme Court cases. Not exactly FBI work, but sufficiently FBI adjacent. These types of lessons, like the previous ones give rise to students turning in assignments that seem crafted specifically to give Mom's for Liberty something to clutch their pearls over. (They probably don't wear pearls, I imagine them in velour jogging suits and bedazzled truckers caps.) Below is an example of the types of assignments the FBI class turns in. If you didn't know better you would say "AHA! I knew that is what they were teaching!"

I'm just going to ignore that plagiarism score. It was group work after all.

7th period learned the art of APA citations. That led to conversations like this:

Them: "Do I need to put the author?"

Me: "Yes".

Them: "What if there are two authors?"

Me: "Put both of them."

Them: "What if there are three authors?"

Me: "List all three."

Them: "This one has four authors. What do I do?"

Me: "List all four."

Them: "Surely you mislead us as this is an abominable amount of work."

Me: "I do not."

Them: "I am supposed to put where it is published. It's on the computer. Is computer a place?"

Me: "Probably."

Then on to AP Study Hall where we had Peer Counselors come to help us with resiliency. I'm not sure how sincere the presenters or creators of the resiliency film were, but it did make me reflect on the hundreds of times a day I have needed to "remember my strengths" and "bounce back although things may never be the same." Daily. Also it was nice to see students ignoring someone other than me for a change.

After school I watched birds. I think they were birds, however it is possible they are children cursed into animal form by failing standardized testing. I suspect the former for they were too well behaved to be children. Here is a picture of one I saw cleaning up after himself. Surely a child would never do that.