A few weeks ago I began to notice these angular paper wedges lodged in the school’s drop ceiling. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but it seemed to coincide with the clocks changing and the weather turning colder. They were easy enough to miss if you weren’t looking up.

But once I started paying attention, I realized they were everywhere. 

In the cafeteria…

In the English hallway…

In my classroom! 

Several times this week I’ve picked up dislodged ceiling darts (that’s what the youth call them) from the floor. Every time it reminds me of my childhood when we’d find quartz arrowheads in the cow pasture. 

Like arrowheads, there’s a handmade character to each of these darts. You see it in the competence of the folding, the tightness of the construction, sometimes even in the decorations they add.

In the beginning of the spring I sometimes have my students write a haiku on the wings of origami cranes and hide them around the school. Where that project is meant to be a serene celebration of spring’s allure and possibilities, these paper darts — jagged, annoying, made out of boredom, hurled chaotically into the ceiling —  seem like the bleak response to that project’s optimism. Instead of a staid haiku they seem to contain manifestations of students’ stress in these final days before the Thanksgiving break: “AP Calc” “College Apps” “SAT scores” “GPA” “Retakes”.  

I assembled a spread of four darts on Friday and had a student with way too much authority on the topic analyze them. 

I asked the student to explain the appeal of these darts. “They’re fun,” she said tersely. 

Yes, fun for the students — and annoying for everyone else involved. They’re a waste of paper and an added burden to the custodial staff. Students could surely make more constructive use of their time. This year, for example, I’m trying to make a thousand origami cranes with PEER. If every one of these darts in the school was a crane, we’d be much closer to our goal. (We’re currently at 290.) 

But part of me enjoys the timelessness of these dumb things.  As long as there has been paper, students have been finding ways to avoid using it for learning. It’s low-tech and there’s no permanent damage. The students I’ve spoken with take a charming amount of pride in their folding technique and in the way they launch the darts at the ceiling.

I was covering a class for a colleague on Friday, and in the final minutes before the bell found myself interrogating a table of students about the fad. 

“You should see Brandon throw them,” said one student. “No one has better technique than Brandon. He does it like this.” The student linked his hands before him and thrust them at the ceiling. 

“Brandon’s good. But no one’s gotten them in that high ceiling in the stairwell,” another student solemnly informed me. “It’s just too high.”   

I tried to make a connection with these students over a similar type of mischief that was popular when I was in high school. I told them a story about this guy I knew named Roach who would spit on the ceiling during Algebra and proceed to catch the spit in his mouth as it dripped down (classic Roach!). The students were horrified. 

Hopefully the paper dart fad will pass as quickly as it emerged. For now, I just hope that for all its annoyance, it’s providing students with a relatively harmless outlet for the pre-holiday stress.

Who knows, maybe I’ll try making one this week…