The Dreaded Seminar

An English class faced a terrible challenge this week in a harrowing turn of events. During a unit seminar, the teacher and students found themselves victim to what they have described as a “hostage situation”. According to student testimony, all was going well until one student decided to disagree with another student’s comment. It was said that this small disagreement prompted the 2 hour long argument that followed.

We asked one of the students for a comment, to which they told us that “the class couldn’t leave, everytime we tried to get up, the two students told us to sit down because they weren’t done with the debate.” When questioned about the teacher’s actions during this seminar, they said that the teacher was “too busy jotting down the tallies of what each student was saying,” and that the back-and-forth between arguments was ‘lightning fast’. The teacher cycled through multiple pens as ink ran out from each one, with the students showing no signs of slowing down. There was reportedly no concession on either side, each not willing to realize that this was a seminar for a school and not a court case in motion.

Once the argument finally finished, both sides, confident they had convinced the other, headed out of the classroom. There they found that the next period had been waiting in the hallway for the past half-hour, unhappy that they had missed their very own seminar time. Some students were reported to have been late to tests and notes, leaving some very unsettled classrooms.

The grades from this monstrous seminar recently came in, and we have learned that the two aspiring lawyers received a high B, while the rest of the class was left unsatisfied with a zero for no participation. In response to this crisis, the teacher, now in a cast from the rapid arm movements of this vicious quarrel, has implemented a limit on how much each student can speak. Here is to hoping that this change prevents such an event from ever happening again.