Zombie Based Learning assignment under fire in Parkers Prairie

Teachers face a constant struggle to make their lessons relatable to their students. An engaged student is an educated student. It’s a form of the “by any means necessary” method of education.

That’s why we have the Zombie Based Learning curriculum.

Creative teaching? What is this fresh nonsense?

So maybe there are pitfalls to the method, a teacher in Parkers Prairie, Minn., is discovering.

The Alexandria Echo Press reports a ninth-grade teacher gave her students an assignment that included listing weapons around the house to kill a zombie, create a zombie survival kit, and list three people to sacrifice to the zombies.

The teacher specifically required her students to list the sacrificial people. No martyrs, she said.

Michelle Diedrich’s daughter started on the assignment before her mother put an end to it.

“I thought she had actually misinterpreted,” Diedrich tells the Echo Press. “I had her print it off. I read it and told her she’s not going to do it. We do not sacrifice others to save ourselves.”

By the time Diedrich complained, the principal had already met with the teacher and it was decided not to grade the assignment.

“I sent another email, begging them not to do it,” Diedrich said. “I kept thinking about that child that’s going to hear his name. They (students) were talking about it in class and talking about who they were going to pick. That one child is going to break. My daughter said there was one who got put on a lot of the lists.”

Some students apparently used their eye for detail.

“If you correctly read the instructions he (the teacher) has copied onto Google Classroom it says ‘your people.’ Nowhere on the assignment does it say that you have to choose friends or family to be on that list,” one student pointed out on Facebook.

The person (in the video above) who created Zombie Based Learning says his curriculum does not involve killing anyone, dying, or writing about weapons.