“Classroom lessons may slip quickly through students’ fingers, but the classroom experience lingers in memory. Each teacher offers students a different model of authority and justice. We set our own standards of fairness and sometimes fail to honor them. A teacher swings a heavy club, and we can leave big, purple bruises if we’re not careful.” Ben Orlin writes for The Atlantic about becoming an unfair teacher and then resolving to improve. For more thoughts about teaching, be sure to check out our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s “55 Thoughts for English Teachers.“
On Being an Unfair Teacher
Punderstrike
At The Hairpin, Alexa C. Kurzius pays a visit to the Punderdome 3000, a monthly “com-pun-tition” that takes place in (where else?) Brooklyn. Among other highlights, the author constructs an alter ego for herself named Pundercat.
A Literary Conspiracy
Gaddis, Pynchon, “Wanda Tinasky”: Jenny Hendrix looks at a real-life literary conspiracy of mistaken identity upon the re-release of “Jack Green’s” Fire the Bastards.
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The End of Copyright, The Death of the Novel
Would anyone write novels in a world without copyright? According to Tim Parks, they probably would not. For more on the relationship between the market and the product, see Parks’s essay on whether more money leads to better writing.
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Big Fans
Chances are you know (and chances are you wonder why you know) that 50 Shades of Grey started out as a work of Twilight fanfiction. You probably harbor some deep suspicions about the value of fanfiction as a genre. But what if I were to tell you that the prototypical work of fanfiction is… The Gospels?
“Good evening.”
While you wait around for Hitchcock to hit theaters, you’ve got plenty of time to check out this online record of thirteen storyboards from the English director’s classic films.
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A Stop-Motion Valentine
A little stop-motion film qua valentine that might appeal to V-day nonbelievers.