In what future historians will consider an unprecedented and revolutionary development for A1 English 11, junior [] introduced a wholly original opinion into Thursday’s Harkness discussion on Their Eyes Were Watching God, roughly thirty-four minutes into a conversation that had, until that moment, consisted entirely of differing opinions, each distinct from the others.

“I think what Hurston is doing is kind of — and this builds on what [] was saying — but it’s like, there are multiple layers,” said [], consulting the Post-it note he had prepared the night before and now held under the table in his lap, at a forty-five-degree angle he apparently believed was invisible.

[] ’27, whose very original point was building on, had herself been building on a very original point made by [] ’27, who had opened the discussion by asking, “Janie’s journey was about more than just one thing. What do you guys think about that?” The teacher, seated outside the oval and holding a clipboard, drew a line on the discussion map connecting []’s name back to []’s name. The line formed a triangle with two previous lines. The triangle completed a shape that meant, well, nothing.

“That’s a really interesting point,” said [] ’27, who had been waiting eleven minutes to say just that.

The observation was greeted with a silence of four minutes, during which six students looked at the table, one student at the ceiling, and one student — identified in the discussion map only by an arrow pointing… nowhere — appeared to briefly consider speaking before deciding, correctly, that he had nothing to add.

The teacher did not intervene. In fact, he hadn’t intervened since September.

“I mean, I definitely was going to say more,” [] added, “but then [] kind of came in and I felt like — I don’t know, I felt like she was going in the same direction.” He paused, and turned to his friend. “We only had to speak twice for participation grade, right?” 

[] had in fact come in with a new point about the symbolism of the horizon, which the class acknowledged by nodding and then immediately returning to the question of whether Janie’s journey was about more than just one thing.

The discussion’s one moment of genuine intellectual friction occurred fifty-two minutes in, when two students reached for something to say at the same time and one of them said, “No, go ahead,” and the other one said, “No, please,” and for a period of thirty seconds, the class sat in silence so complete that a bird could be heard outside the window, somewhere on the other side of the glass, living its life without a ten-point participation grade.

“I think both of your points are valid,” said a third student. The entire room could hear the teacher scribbling on a clipboard.

Tatler was able to gain exclusive access to the discussion maps from the period, which show a web of lines connecting every student’s name to every other student’s name, suggesting that a rich and interconnected intellectual exchange had occurred. That, or everyone said “building on you said” enough times that the map became a mandala. The teacher, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, described Thursday’s Harkness as “good energy. They added that the class had “really dug into the text.”

They did not elaborate on which text.

Reached for comment on the state of Harkness at Lakeside more broadly, [] said that he thought it was a “good format, overall,” and that he personally “always made sure that other people had a chance to speak.” Administrative records show that he had spoken seven times in the previous twenty-minute discussion. Furthermore, he was the only student who had spoken more than twice.

After seventy minutes, the class was assigned a reflection in which they were asked to evaluate the quality of their discussion in a paragraph. [] wrote that he felt his peers had “pushed each other to think more deeply about the novel.” He received full credit.

The bird was gone.