Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Nepotism

I have another great story from today. In World History in 8th grade, we're just starting to shift into the Reformation. Today's lesson was about highlighting the major problems that were tainting the Church, some of the basic reasons people were wanting to reform it. What I had the students do was act out a problem based on a description I gave them (e.g. selling forgiveness for sins, trying to buy a church position, etc), and the rest of the class had to guess what the name of this particular problem was (e.g. indulgences, simony, etc). I had a list of 5-6 problems.

One that hadn't ever appeared in the book and I figured would be brand new was nepotism, the idea of showing favoritism to a family member or friend. The group acted it out perfectly, and with a smirk, I asked if anyone had any idea what the name for this problem was. But the joke was on me when one student haltingly tried muttering "Nepo- something. Nepotism?"

Picking my jaw up off the floor, I asked, "JB, how did you know that?"

"The Office."

"Come again?"

BD chimed in. "Oh yeah, they did have an episode on Nepotism."

Who knew? The Office is educational!

2 comments:

Sheryl said...

I learned about Chaos from the old Get Smart TV show! (It IS an educational medium!!! :) ) Actually, I heard last week's episode of The Office had a lot of great stuff on leaving well and transition. I'm going to have to check it out.

jake said...

Man, I was away from the internet just a few days and you got prolific! Thanks for posting so many funny stories. Love you, M