I'm in line at the grocery store...

I'm having thoughts. Deep ones, man, like, "How can I get all of my students arrested?"

So the guy checking me out asks, "How are you doing?"

"I'm...scheming."

"Scheming on who?"

(You kids with your hep lingo, I think.) "Not on anyone. I'm coming up with an evil plan."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I'm trying to figure out a way to get all of my students arrested." He stops in mid-swipe and looks at me with an appropriate level of confusion. "I mean, I'm a teacher. An English teacher. And I was thinking about teaching a class on rock 'n' roll, and I thought it would be fun if, as a final project, we had a concert on the roof of a building, like the Beatles did."

He looked unconvinced.

"They'd have to be arrested, though. It wouldn't count if they weren't arrested."

"Why not?"

"Because the Beatles were escorted off of the roof by the police. They were stopping traffic."

He resumed swiping. I figured that I had crossed some sort of line, though I'm not sure which one was the one that lost him. "Also, I can't think of a way to make a concert on the roof pedagogically useful. That and my chair might take a dim view of me getting my class arrested."

"Well, if that happens, you let me know. If you don't tell anyone else, you tell me."

"Sure thing."

I walked into the parking lot and reflected further on the implications of getting my students arrested. One could make a reasonable case that I would never work at my school again. If any of them were under 17, which is a possibility, I might be contributing to the delinquency of an assload of minors, if that law means what I think it does. Also, what if a student has a warrant or is on probation or something and they get arrested for a grade and then they get shipped off to Gitmo or whatever? What if I had international students whose visa required that they not get arrested?

What else could I do if I taught the rock 'n' roll course? I thought as I waited for a break in the traffic so I could cross the street.

Well, it has to be musical somehow. A concert would be great, but there is the inconvenient fact that a fair number of my students would not play an instrument. What if we hosted a jam session open to the entire student body and faculty? That could kick ass. It would be loud and unexpected. But would it be rock 'n' roll?

Any ideas?

HJ