On December 14 at Leezville Road High School, Derek Brewer, Leezville’s A.P. Calculus A.B. and Newspaper teacher, walked into his classroom only to discover 24 banana slugs lying on the floor. Upon further examination, investigators realized that the slugs were once Brewer’s Newspaper students.
Brewer suspects that these 24 healthy teenagers transformed into shell-less gastropod molluscs due to their lack of motivation. In his Newspaper class, he observed a steady decline in his students’ work ethics that corresponded with physical transformations.
“As their articles became shorter, so did their limbs,” Brewer said. “Then, their fingers disappeared, and they couldn’t type anymore. It was all downhill from there.”
So what prompted this lack of motivation among Leezville’s Newspaper students? No one knows for sure. At first, Brewer suspected senioritis to be the case, but this issue affected students of all grade levels. The only certainty in this situation is that all attempts to combat the students’ apparent apathy failed.
“We tried to postpone our print edition,” said Brewer. “I thought the class just needed a break. I suggested that they work on multimedia projects instead, you know, something new, something fresh. I thought they had everything they needed: purpose, mastery, autonomy.”
Since there would no longer be a printed newspaper, Brewer even went as far as to rename Leezville’s journalism classes simply as I, II, III Honors, and IV Honors. However, his efforts to rekindle the motivation in his classroom fell short. Instead of uniting around these multimedia projects and striving to produce the most professional products possible, the limbs of Leezville’s journalism students continued to shrink.
Because the students began to spend all their class time scrolling through their social media feeds, within a few days, the only fingers they had left were their index fingers. They lost their ability to type articles and produce any kind of content for their class, no matter the quality; from there, their devolution progressed swiftly.
Now, Brewer’s former students lie on the tiled floor of his classroom, their slimy backs shining in the flickering fluorescent lights. Parents will collect their slugs tomorrow, and scientists are currently working to convert the slugs back to their former selves. Unfortunately, there is little hope of recovering the students’ former bodies—and their work ethics.
In the meantime, Brewer has been providing the slugs with plenty of decomposing leaves and animal droppings to eat.
