persuasive essays go up in smoke

We are homeschoolers but are under a public school charter. This means our curriculum if it is non-secular and from approved vendors is purchased with public school monies. It is a great help! The school is very parent driven in that they want to help us as homeschoolers do it on our own, but they keep a portfolio of work. They don't ask for much in return, honesty and to do our best is one, STAR testing at the end of the year, and a writing essay each year.
This years genre (or type of writing) was or is persuasive essays. We struggled thru over and over, and then the day arrived I handed out the real and test essay questions. I could not help, they could not use any graphic organizers, it had to be out of their mind.
I must be out of my mind, as this goes all against how I had been unschooling in my eclectic little world. We had two melt downs, and one total freak...Eric already had it down from Mrs. Surowic (in New Mexico, one of the BEST teachers there ever could be)! I yelled and pulled my hair...then said, I am going in the living room to pray, you do the best you can, I love you and when I come out, I will collect them. We will turn them in and then be done.
They floundered and couldn't figure out what I wanted or the paper wanted...
I collected the papers and declared the words: Persuasive and essay when used together a common foul world...and that we were not to use it for the remaining school year with out chastisement.
This brought giggles!
I went on....and so forth...I have decreed that this night in fireplace all paperwork we have done on these nasty things will be burnt at the stake.
You can tell, Eric is a bit worried about my state of mind as he looks at me, Anna couldn't get it in fast enough, and her tears had soaked that notebook just a few hours earlier, Abby's grinned made my evening, and Gabriel was just excited to be able to shove anything into the roaring fire.
I took the pictures while laughing.
Tony shook his head at me, and said something about me enjoying this way to much.
They were good fodder for the fire, much better than teaching 5 paragraphs to persuade someone about animals to buy, vacations to take or the pros and cons of tv. Yeah those were our big topics.
They will be turned in and we moved on to butterflies, stink bugs, scorpions, fire ants and killer bees. You see homeschooling is fun when you let it stay your home!