AP Government "First Amendment Activity"

Today was senior skip day. Sadly, I had to go to school to finish a deadline for yearbook. I happened to finish that just in time, and am so grateful to have the stress of the last deadline of the year off of my shoulders. I was glad that I went to school though because of what happened in AP gov. We only had eight people in class along with our T.A. Since our teacher knew we would have so many people gone due to senior skip day, he didn't plan anything for us to do, which was funny because my one AP class was the class that didn't have anything going on and didn't have an expectation of being there or doing anything. My classmates decided that since we had nothing to do, we were going to build a fort. It started small...

And the fort got bigger...

 

And bigger...

 And bigger until it used every desk, chair, and white board in the classroom. At this point, we decided that we would hold nothing back in making this fort, so we went to work.

We fortified this fort unlike anything else, and even made barricade like structures out of the chairs and made an entrance tunnel out of desks. Our teacher thought we were hilarious for doing this, but let us do it anyway. We told him that he should give us extra credit for being there and building the fort, so he had us take a vote to decide whether or not we would like extra credit. We obviously voted unanimously to get extra credit. He then asked us what he would put it in the grade book as. He came up with the idea to call it a "first amendment activity". The reason? We were exercising the "right of assembly" by assembling a fort. Clearly, this is not what is meant in the first amendment, but we thought it was clever and decided to go with it. In order for him to put it in the grade book, we all had to get up at the pulpit in the fort and give a speech explaining why we called the assignment what we did and why we should get extra credit for it. I doubt he will actually put it in the grade book, but it was still fun and worth a shot. Once the fort was finished, we decided that we would prepare to stay and ambush the class after us. In order to do this, we had to make a flag, several signs, and crumple up a bunch of butcher paper to throw at them as well as prepare an overhead projector to shine in their faces to "blind" them.

 Sadly though, our "attack" didn't frighten sixth period, but they didn't like the signs that said "6th period sucks" in four different languages (and yes, we did purposely spell it wrong in English). This fort definitely made it worth my time to come to school today, and will be something that I remember for an awfully long time.