We have a mezzaine and surround sound in 214 (now 212 thanks to Lemme) thanks to AP Lang class of 2000

The 21 or so kids in AP Lang class of 2000 were always thinking, creative, and insightful--they also had a wicked sense of humor and the practical joke.  It probably didn't help that I started the year with an assignment in parallelism called "Why Our AP Lang is Better than the Big Nun's." Now I could do this because we were friends and she would be disappointed if she didn't get a long parallel posting on her door. From 1999 came "good things come in small packages."  In 2000 no one was safe, they had my and my dad's wicked sense of teasing. So, one got it for thinking the SCEB president who always looked like he came out of GQ and never hurt a soul was "intimidating." Once she admitted that around April she was sunk; she had to hear it daily. Another was teased for doing his religion homework in my class, and I assumed he had English the period before.  They took the sofa and turned it to the tv and elevated it for "mezzanine" viewing. Ethan who had previously talked his parents into taking him to Gettysburg before sophomore year to get a jump on a project for me didn't get me that year, but he did  senior year. His grandfather invented surroundsound in its earliest form. All you need is two paper plates and you bend them around your ears so the sound comes in better, and you could come by and see us doing this. Me included.  And here is where I say people thought I was strict?  With this sense of humor?  I am assured by thousands  it is all in "THE LOOK."  Once someone got it for some way off the mark and poor S  nearly fell out of his chair laughing, I have gotten it many a time in two years, but never to that extent.Then there is JG's argument that Pirandello's "A Cat, the Goldfinch and the Stars" was really a Christian allegory. The writer was a nihilist, known for saying something like the "the horse , the hearse, basta!" That's it. In my class if you could create and argument and use the text to  support it, no matter how strange, it was acceptable and they all knew it. Here they weren't trying to figure out what some scholar said or what I wanted them to say. They knew I was looking for them to think, so laughing I had to say great argument; Pirandello is turning over in his grave, but you sold it , well , sort of .