“Would the fact that a character swears a lot be an internal or external characteristic?” asks my student S. today.

“Well…” I respond. “Is swearing something he is, or something he does?”

“Something he does.”

“Then it’s external. But it’s a clue as to what is internal.” I try to bump up his Bloom’s Taxonomy a bit. “What is inside the character that makes him swear a lot?”

S. thinks. Then he looks at me and literally twinkles.

“The devil,” he says.

Perhaps I should have titled this post “How To Hide Giggling Silently During an Entire Class.”

Next up: Ed Deci’s Intrinsic Motivation Theory.