To give you an idea of what the kids are like, after I taught Yeats, explaining that I'd memorized 10,000 lines of him as a kid and explaining his paralyzing effect on so many of his successors, this was the exchange with my 15 year olds.
Boy 1: Mr. Murphy, how did you overcome the influence of Yeats in your twenties.
Teacher: I wrote some very funny parodies of him when I was about 25 and got over him.
Boy 2: Mr. Murphy, I've googled you and I want to know what kind of shotgun do you shoot.
Teacher: A Winchester Model 23 that has both .20 and .28 guage barrels.
Boy 2: Wow! Would you bring it to class and show us?
Teacher: Sorry, I'd go to jail.
Girl 1: Mr. Murphy, why don't you adore Yeats now as much as you did when you were our age?
Pretty grown up interchange for a bunch of high school freshman.
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