WHY DID I DO IT?

By Miss. Dunne

People keep asking me:“Miss. Dunne, why did you sabotage your students' group project?” “Miss. Dunne, did you really put on a hood, sneak in, and leave a cryptic message just to mess with them?” “Miss. Dunne, are you even qualified to be doing this?”

To which I say: yes, yes, and technically, yes.

Let me explain.

I didn’t sabotage my students because I wanted them to fail. I sabotaged them because I wanted them to learn. Real learning doesn’t happen when tell students where they are going wrong or let them regurgitate facts. It happens when they’re sweating in a locked room at 4 p.m., wondering who deleted their essay and whether one of their groupmates is a saboteur or just genuinely that incompetent or maybe it's a crazy stage 5 clinger.

In life, projects will go missing. Emails will mysteriously disappear. People will argue over whether the teacher said “Youths in Asia” or "euthanasia". You won’t always know who to trust. Sometimes it’s your fault. Sometimes it’s mine. That’s life. That’s education. That’s… beautiful.

By being their detention teacher, I became the mirror they needed — the chaos that exposed their cracks, the mystery that forced them to work together. I gave them the greatest gift of all: shared trauma, wrapped in group dynamics and disguised as an academic exercise.

They’ll remember this experience forever.

So… why did I do it?Because deep down, I believe in them.Also, it was very funny.