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I Made a Monster Out of Clay

The top half of Councilman Jones’ body hung by a steel cable looped around his neck and tied off to an old oak tree on one end. It was still dripping blood, bones and veins and torn bits of intestines dangling down where the legs should start. The cable was stretched through the air, over to an ash tree ten yards away from where the other half of the body was hanging by the legs.

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Black Sap

We were having another lockdown drill when I found out about Holly Reyes. I was in Social Studies, third period, when Principal Weston’s muffled voice spat at us from the ceiling. We all sighed and ducked under the long tables, limbs shoving aside plastic chairs as we army-crawled into tucked

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Spring Flu

The spring flu had been going around the school like usual, but some people were sicker than normal. They didn’t just have fever and headache – their faces were blotchy, their eyes bulged, and they all wheezed like they’d just run up ten flights of stairs without stopping. Cara McCormack

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Why I Hate Scarecrows

I hate scarecrows. I have ever since I was little. I found something about the dolls stuffed with straw unsettling. I remember my parents tried to help me get over this fear by telling me things like, “They’re not scary, they only want to be friends” or some other lame

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Northern Lights

I never wanted to go on that stupid hike in the first place. Yet there I was, allegedly enjoying nature and getting healthy exercise while hiking from “cabin to cabin” in the Norwegian mountains with the devil spawn otherwise known as my class. Woohoo, right? For a misanthropic misfit like myself, it was a nightmare. Within half an hour of walking on the uneven path over the heather, I was at the back of the group.

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The Living History Project

One of my least favorite parts about being a middle school history teacher is the bullshit “Living History” assignments we give at the end of every school year. Kids are supposed to sit with their grandparents and video tape, voice record, or transcribe their oldest memories for posterity (and for

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My Students Are Disappearing

My name is Oliver Stricc. I’m a 52-year-old biology teacher from a small town in northeastern Nebraska, and I have been for almost 14 years. I’ll be the first to admit that lecturing to a bunch of uninterested high school students wasn’t what I had planned to do after getting

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