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!