When my students learn that I'm from Kentucky they laugh. Who wouldn't? Hey, I do. Just pronouncing the word is like pushing your tongue through cooling sorghum. But my students laugh because they are from just outside of Baltimore. And just outside D.C. Because of their cool location in, oh, Glen Burnie, they like to brag that they "roll hard" and all their friends "roll hard." And this prime location makes them ipso facto more stylish and more intelligent.
For this blog, I'll leave the style factor alone. Too many images of teenage butt cracks and cleavage disturb my mind and churn my stomach. To digress--some teachers, you know who you are, seriously--this is attractive? The exposed underwear alone is about to make me quit.
Back to Glen Burnie students' superior intelligence over my hometown in Kentucky. As I teach in rhetoric, sometimes one example is enough to prove a point. Being my third year to teach Frankenstein, I know now that I have to begin by telling my students the following:
1-Frankenstein the movie came after the book
2-Movies are creative adaptations of prior books
3-Yes, Mary Shelley was a girl
4-No, it won't be gay because a girl wrote it
5-Frankenstein is the scientist, NOT the monster
I repeat number 5 multiple times in a day because these teenagers have Alzheimer's.
Of the 20 something chapters and the beginning letters, we are currently half way through. Thank God because that means the school year's almost over. In preparation for the quiz over this half, I reviewed Frankenstein's reasons for having a heavy conscience. A hand popped up, very eager to answer.
"Like he's guilty (the word conscience is too much) idn't he because he's killin all those people to get at Victor."
"Honey, we've been over this. Do you have a first name? And do you have a last name? Yes, good. So does Victor, the scientist, aka Frankenstein."
"Huh?" (She wasn't the only one in room with that fried look)
Someone else ventures, "So you're saying Frankenstein is not the monster?"
"Yes. The monster is the monster. Victor Frankenstein is his creator." I'm so exasperated that I'm contemplating walking out and collecting government assistance for awhile.
Then I wait for it, it happens every year during this book. The collective "ahs" in the room as if we'd been talking about existentialism for a month and not merely figuring out a main character's name.
