Dick Vernon: An Innovator

I am working a Saturday Detention as I type this blog. I got thinking about The Breakfast Club. I was in grade school and junior high when I watched that movie for my first through forty-first time, and I so looked forward to being like John Bender and getting Saturday Detentions every weekend! Sadly, I was more like Brian Johnson, and much like him, I was a dork, and I only had one Saturday detention. My Saturday detention was nowhere near as cool as in the movie. It was me and like 3 other kids, and we were watched over closely by the dean. In the movie, Dick Vernon leaves the room. Leaves the room!!! Can you imagine? It’s not like anything bad happened, right? Well, I guess the kids did GET HIGH!! How did he not smell that? Also, John Bender climbed up onto the ceiling and crawled around in the rafters, but that’s not dangerous, right? I wonder if I should take the Dick Vernon approach . . .

I have seven middle school kids in here. It is a library, like the Breakfast Club, but we don’t have the modern art sculpture as a centerpiece, complete with bologna stuck to it. I made sure to put them all at individual tables with each of their smiling faces facing me. They have to raise their hands if they want anything, and then I come over to them to see what it is they want. I let them know at the start that there are scheduled bathroom breaks, so don’t ask me if you can use the washroom. It appears as if Dick Vernon and I differ in our styles. I am also yet to use the pull the kid into a private room and dare them to punch you in your face technique, but maybe I’m just not being open-minded enough. We have little packets of busy-work for them to do, so that they can’t use this as an opportunity to catch up on work, and so we have a standard measure of how much they complete. Dick went with the essay of “no less than 1,000 words.” That’s always good too, but aren’t they going to have to come back next Saturday since Brian Johnson wrote all of their essays? Well, four of them hooked up with each other, and they got high, so why WOULDN’T they want to come back the following week? Wait, four of them hooked up, so that leaves Brian Johnson as the lone guy not to hook up, AND he had to do everyone’s homework. Wow, he was a lot like me in high school.


Sincerely Yours,

The Breakfast Club

(Cue the Simple Minds track. As a kid I always thought that was Billie Idol. The singer really sounds like him. I had a soccer picture in button form from when I was around 8 in which the wind was causing my blond hair to blow and my face to contort, both of which led me to look just like Vital Idol! I have to find that picture and post it . . . )