Today on my way home, I was trying to gather my thoughts for my novel. I'm kind of getting bored with it, which means it needs an injection of new ideas. I'm into the action, but I haven't developed any characters besides my main character, and that only internally, really.
Maybe because it is election day, and my novel takes place in the future, I started to play "What If..." with the school in my story. What if schools were well-funded by the time my novel takes place? In fact, what if they are completely privatized... but still public in name? I'm thinking: Seniors don't pay for any graduation paraphernalia, but their caps, gowns, announcements, class rings et al are covered with logos and slogans. Marquees scroll across the tops of the plasma boards. Lessons are routinely interrupted by short ads which you can skip after 10 seconds. Candidates run on platforms of supporting educational funding, but what it really means is a new form of pork-barrelling, but from the corporations into the schools vs. the other way around. Students become a major market. It took a foothold when parents became so grateful for all the "support" companies were providing trying to encourage graduation. Meanwhile, up to one full graduation credit can be earned by cutting out boxtops and pasting them onto colorful worksheets and handing them into the office. I'm trying to focus on all the possible manifestations of this idea, but I'm distracted by my actual teaching load.
My novel may turn into satire.
My student numbers just don't seem to go down. 156. And most of them show up. The grading load is going to do in my nanowrimo novel.
Meanwhile, hypothetical projections of presidential winners are being declared all over the networks, one state at a time. And my kids somehow managed to turn on The Simpsons. How did that happen?
Maybe because it is election day, and my novel takes place in the future, I started to play "What If..." with the school in my story. What if schools were well-funded by the time my novel takes place? In fact, what if they are completely privatized... but still public in name? I'm thinking: Seniors don't pay for any graduation paraphernalia, but their caps, gowns, announcements, class rings et al are covered with logos and slogans. Marquees scroll across the tops of the plasma boards. Lessons are routinely interrupted by short ads which you can skip after 10 seconds. Candidates run on platforms of supporting educational funding, but what it really means is a new form of pork-barrelling, but from the corporations into the schools vs. the other way around. Students become a major market. It took a foothold when parents became so grateful for all the "support" companies were providing trying to encourage graduation. Meanwhile, up to one full graduation credit can be earned by cutting out boxtops and pasting them onto colorful worksheets and handing them into the office. I'm trying to focus on all the possible manifestations of this idea, but I'm distracted by my actual teaching load.
My novel may turn into satire.
My student numbers just don't seem to go down. 156. And most of them show up. The grading load is going to do in my nanowrimo novel.
Meanwhile, hypothetical projections of presidential winners are being declared all over the networks, one state at a time. And my kids somehow managed to turn on The Simpsons. How did that happen?
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