Monster Mash

This week, Halloween was on the mind.  Here's the rundown:

I showed up to class on Tuesday and was asked to give an impromptu reading of "The Raven."  It helped that we did a reading exercise about dress codes beforehand, entitled "Are You a Goodie With a Hoodie?" about bans of hoodies in schools and shopping malls (and conversely, a school in which hoodies are part of the uniform).  I threw up my hood and recited the poem. 

I read "The Raven" to an older group of students the next day, and showed them "The Simpsons" short to give them a visual aide.  Then I broke down some of the language of the poem to make it easier to understand:

"many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" = interesting old books

"rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore" = beautiful dead girlfriend

I had my candle with me all week and frequently turned out the lights to recite scary stories.  One such story I invented involved a boy getting lost in a forest and entering a haunted house, and asking Frankenstein, a witch, and a skeleton if they were his daddy, mommy, and sister.  Largely inspired by a Maurice Sendak pop-up book, "Mommy?" in which a boy goes looking through a haunted house and asks various monsters if they are his mommy.   In my story, the boy finds his real family, he tells them what happened, and they think he is crazy. 

The teacher came up with an interesting twist: I would repeat the story a second time and the kids would recite back the lines of dialog and sound effects during my pauses.  I thought this was a great way to test their comprehension and memory and boost audience participation. 

Since today is the last day before a long weekend, we celebrated in school.  I dressed up as a vampire, with a cape and formal wear (though my make-up job was Joker-esque).  The kids bobbed for apples hanging from a volleyball net.  I was supposed to read scary stories inside one of the classrooms, but coordination was limited and nobody was directing students.  Instead, I ran around the playground saying, "I vant to suck your blood!"

On Monday I found the Peanuts 60th Anniversary Collection, which contains "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," which I was excited to screen for my class.  However, when I tested the disc in the classroom DVD player I received a Disc Error, which didn't happen when I put in the second disc.  So I went back to the store from which I bought the DVD, Fnac, and they told me the only replacement copy was in a store outside of the city of Madrid.  I took a bus outside of the city to Plaza Norte to obtain the replacement.  When I tested the new DVD the next day- disc error!  Apparently the problem was not with the disc but with the DVD player.  Fortunately, my coordinator was able to project it off of his laptop for one of our classes, so I had the satisfaction of showing a group of students this holiday classic. 

Then, at the end of my final class, we danced the "Monster Mash."  A perfect way to end our celebration!

One of those days

Note: So we’re 2/3rds into October and I’ve decided to write my first update for the month.  As I exchange e-mails with friends and family about personal topics, I question the value of keeping a blog.  I would love to hear your insights- perhaps it is to maintain a flow of communication with a broader audience, or to disseminate information to everyone at once.  Mostly, I believe a blog should be a fun creative outlet, a forum for storytelling, a place to share thoughts and ideas.  So I will try to get back into the swing of it, since I believe there to still be unexplored value.

Onto the update:

Next week is Halloween, so I went out and bought a sticker book filled with Halloween images.  I had the students draw bats, jack o’ lanterns, spiders, witches, haunted houses, mummies, Frankenstein, and Dracula during English class.  I drew these images on the chalkboard and wrote their English names alongside.  Pandemonium filled the room each time I erased the images to replace them with new ones, but kids need to understand time allowances.  One student helped me in this endeavor, as he kept track of the ten-minute intervals on his watch and shouted the countdown at the front of the class as the other students raced to finish their drawings and yelled at him.  The exercise went well, and the students’ pages were filled with Halloween drawings. 

Then, two periods later after a long break, the art teacher was absent.  The teachers were once again on strike today and the students asked me if they could play futbol outside.  I almost relented and let them play until one girl came up to me and asked:

“Are we going to have art class today?”

“Do you want to?” I responded.

“Yes.”

“Then lets go inside.”

One student made me realize the importance of holding my ground, of committing to the act of teaching.  So I brought a class full of mopey faces inside, when all they wanted to do was play.  The class was so noisy that I cut them a deal; if they work for 25 minutes we could play Seven-Up at the end of class.  I started explaining the project: draw a three-panel comic strip using the Halloween characters from before.  Turns out, after the 25 minutes were up the students wanted to continue working on their comic strips.  A few kids rebelled- we had made a deal, after all- but I told them to look around at all the other students working.  When the bell rang the students had produced some amazing work.

Then, some students came running back into the room to tell me there was a disruption on the stairway.  One of the students in my class had fallen down and was in tears.  Time to maintain order, stay with the student, make him feel better, and seek help.

Once the day was done, I asked myself, “Did I really just do all that?” 

Yep, just another school day.