Weird Al

Many many

many

many

many

years ago, I was a high school senior.

In the spring of that year, I took a history course with my favorite teacher, Geraldine Lynch.

Miss Lynch was not my favorite teacher because she was nice. (She wasn’t.) She was my favorite teacher because she worked us hard, expecting us to think and make connections and care.

Which made my decision to write a satirical final essay for her course, a survey of current events, kind of surprising.

Even more surprising was the grade I got: an A+. The first A+ Miss Lynch had given, she later told me, in 11 years.

I was reminded of this when I happened upon this essay about Weird Al Yankovic, a hilarious satirical song writer. It made me think about satire and final exams, about COVID and surreality, about relaxing our grip on this unprecedentedly bizarre year.

Why not, in other words, give students the option of writing satire this final exam season?

A satirical song or essay or skit about a particular period in history? about a novel? hell, about

calculus as a whole?

Because you can’t succeed at satire if you don’t understand what you’re satirizing.

I know: Not everyone can do satire. That’s why it could be one option for a final exam. But it could also be a class activity, a form of review. An opportunity to break out and have fun with the course content.

For example:

1) Choose a song. Get the karaoke track for it.

2) As an entire class, come up with potential lines for the song. Have the students do this in class. Have the students do this for homework. Make a long long list. Range far and wide. Make sure students understand the lines. Make sure you understand the lines.

3) Break the students into groups. Have them pick and choose the lines they like and put them together into their version of the song, which they record.

4) Play all the versions for the class.

OR

Have the groups come up with lines that they then throw on the board and have the entire class put them together into a song.

Which you then post for the school to hear.

Who would not tune in?

Worried about posting it? That your students will embarrass themselves? OK. Don’t post it. Whatever your students want. But consider: Making fun of people who are making fun of something is like spitting in the wind. Go ahead.

Mantra: Joke’s on you, COVID.