“The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley …” So said the poet Robert Burns, who lived in Scotland many years ago but was apparently able to predict the fate of my best-laid schemes in an American classroom many years later.

Like most best-laid schemes, it all started innocently enough. I got the clever idea (or so I thought at the time) to post a help wanted sign on my classroom door the first day of school. It read: