Right on schedule! 3 months later I decide to pop my head back into the blogosphere. Just in time so that most people lose interest, haha. I'm like the JLo of blogging. Hoping to make a strong second come back...
Goodness, where to begin. I think we should start back at Halloween and work our way up. Here we goooo...
So last year, with my students, we played a Halloween vocabulary game and I made (nay, allowed them) to watch the greatest Halloween video to ever grace our earth, otherwise known as Donald Duck Trick or Treat. It's from 1952 but it's my absolute favorite clip I remember from wathching VHS Disney movies at daycare. I also gave them Halloween pencils, spider rings, and/or candy shaped like body parts. They loved this last part, especially.
I'm learning quickly, however, that bribing kids with candy is a bit of a cop-out. Don't get me wrong, this definitely doesn't mean I don't still do it...hell yes I bribe them, the kids from all of my private classes are huuuuge pains in the ass and psychotic sometimes. The kids with the cat with the butthole get crazier every single week. More on that later...but my point is that a little sugar-free hard candy never hurt anybody. Especially the diabetic ones (can I get a virtual high-five for finding candy the whole family can enjoy without having to give the diabetic girl an entire pack of gum once a month?? YES!)
Since I gave up the bribery tactics, I had to get creative. Let me just preface with saying that the funniest thing you can possibly do with children of any age is to make them stick their hand into a pumpkin when they are completely clueless as to what's inside.
Last year I explained to my students how to make a pumpkin. They were excited but we never actually cut into one. This year, with my 1st graders, I actually let them "help me" make it...aka I let them scoop out the seeds & crap so I didn't get my hands dirty. I spent 40 minutes polishing tiny tuxedos on my fingernails for the shock & awe value from them....the least they can do is roll up their sleeves and take one for the team.
Anyways...there are so many unseen problems in teaching. Things that usually seem self-explanatory, for a 23 year old, but maybe not for a 6 year old. I've got 17 years of experience on them (God I feel old) and I shouldn't expect them to have reached my level of common sense. So I take full responsibility for the fact that 3 of my students tried to eat the raw pumpkin seeds when I wasn't looking. I also take responsibility for the fact that a.) I wasn't watching (because I didn't think they were going to stick them in their mouths) and that b.) I laughed/cackled/might have accidentally pointed while laughing once I realized why they looked like they wanted to vom. Lesson of the day: if you touch something and it grosses you out, don't try to put it in your mouth.
Moving onto second grade. These are my favorites from last year (although they are turning into tiny little nightmares as time goes on...it breaks my heart but I've also started talking to them in Spanish when they won't shut up, and that way I can tug on their heart strings easier. Speaking in their native language hits home harder. If they wanna play hardball, I'm gonna bring it...) I told one of my teachers that I wished we could buy things in bulk here, or have more supplies to play fun Halloween games with them. She told me if we just tell the kids to bring in whatever it was, we could do whatever it was. Done!! The week before Halloween we told the students to bring in an apple (for bobbing for apples) and a roll, or two, or three, of toilet paper (to do mummy races).
Now, if you are a 7 year old, and your teacher tells you to bring in these two items for Halloween, your mind starts racing (apparently), especially since she's cruel and won't tell you what it's for. For a whole week. I've never seen these kids concentrate long enough to write their own names, let alone spend an entire week pondering and stalking me during recess, asking what we were going to do. They're also terrible gossips, so I heard SO MANY different possibilities of what was going to happen. Here are a few (after awhile they forgot about logic and reason):
1.) We were going to use the apples to make pumpkins. (....if I wanted you to make pumpkins, don't you think I'd ask you to bring in a pumpkin?)
2.) We were going to use the toilet paper to wrap the apples so they were like eggs and throw them at cars. (2 things....1.) like #1, don't you think if I wanted to throw eggs, I'd have you bring eggs? 2.) Spain has watched too many bad teen movies and thinks that on Halloween people throw eggs at crap for funsies...I have never understood it and have never been able to set the record straight. So I usuallys smile and nod and roll my eyes to myself)
3.) We were going to shoot apples off each others heads like Isaac Newton. (once more, the kids know about gravity and Newton but can't tell me if it's sunny or cloudy outside...)
4.) They were going to be vampires. (no logic at all)
Irene, the teacher who works with me in 2nd grade, is new this year, cute as a button, my age, and therefore very overzealous. We both lack the teaching experience to step back and say "you know, these are awesome ideas but there's no way we can pull so much awesomeness off in one day.......or ever." So instead we (stupidly) decided to join all of the 2nd grade classes, 66 7-year olds, together and have one big Halloween party. Two other teachers offered to help us organize and play as well (even though they just wanted to watch the crazy). First we watched Scared Shrek-less, a hilarious spin-off of Shrek for the holiday. Then we told the kids to grab their TP, their apples, and come downstairs with us. We took over the preschoolers playground and the plan was to split them into three groups. One group would do mummy races with the toilet paper. Another group would make two lines and play bobbing for apples (we only had 2 big vats for water) and the other group would just color a worksheet for Halloween. Trying to split up 66 second graders is like trying to lick your elbow. Impossible, frustrating, and tiring. Eventually you just give up and submit to defeat. It took us approximately a minute and twenty seconds to come to this realization.
Once we had succumb to our lack of control, I manned the bobbing for apples station, Irene started wrapping children in toilet paper willy nilly, and a group of stragglers started coloring. We had no help. The two other teachers didn't feel like going outside because it was cold so it was just the two of us. Plus 66. This is also the precise moment I stopped speaking only English and started screaming in Spanish. Which only shut them up for about 10 seconds before they started in with "CHELSEA, you know Spanish!??! Say something else! Say something else!" or even better, "Chelsea, you speak Spanish so well!!! You've learned so much since last year!" I try not to get depressed by this by reminding myself that I, myself, told them that I didn't speak Spanish and they don't know that I've spent the last 10 years trying to perfect it....sigh. Deep breaths.
I pick a student to come with me to the bathroom to fill the vats with water. The sinks were midget sized for the preschoolers, so we did our best to fill them up. That means that I filled mine up as best as I could and India, the girl helping me, spilled half of hers all over the bathroom counter & floor. While we were filling the bowls one of the preschool boys came in and accidentally peed all over the floor because he was paying too much attention to what we were doing. I figured all acts balanced each other out and created a purpose for the other. Perfect harmony.
We waddled outside with the bowls, turned two trashcans upside down, and placed the bowls on top so they were at comfortable mouth level for the students. They make 2 lines with their apples in hand, and we start bobbing for apples. I tried to explain that the best system was to shove your head in, without being afraid of getting wet, push the apple to the bottom, and once it touches bite into it with your mouth. For adults this might have been an easier task...2nd graders don't know how to hold their breath, shove their head into decently cold water, and bite all at the same time while not using their hands and not thrashing around like migrating fish. To make a long story short, within the first minute one of the bowls went crashing to the floor and created a small tidal wave of water (approximately 5 gallons).
This wouldn't be that big of a deal except that I was wearing my new boots and we were uphill........and the mummies were downhill. So all of the monsoon headed straight towards the mounds and mounds of easily-cleanable dry toilet paper....soaking it and making the biggest soggiest mess you've ever seen.
By the end of the day Irene was exhausted, I was soaking wet, and the kids had had the absolute time of their lives. 70% were soaking wet as well with their entire upper body covered in water (which is impressive considering there was only 6 inches or so of water...how does that happen!?)
I'm exhausted just remembering it, and it happened over a month ago. Phew.
The crazy nun has turned into a bit of a Grinch this year, so she sucked the fun out of all of my classes with her. Those classes didn't really get to do Halloween unfortunately, which is just sad for the students more than anything. I'm working on it but it's really hard to sway her on anything because she's quite thick headed.
That brings me to the 5th and 6th graders. They are a bit older, and are always too cool for school, so I constantly pressure myself to be the fun teacher and not be lame and boring (I feel like I'm striving for social status in high school all over again. Except this time I'm totally winning). This might just be the most epic thing I will ever do in my life.
Since they're older, I thought they could handle something scarier and a bit more hands on. I told them to bring in 10 sheets of paper towel or napkins. I turned off all of the lights, made the entire classroom black as night, and brought a tiny flashlight. I shined it on my face (it was an LED flashlight, I think I permanently scarred my retinas...what happened to the dim old fashioned dull flashlights you could tell scary stories with??) and told them we were going to talk about a man named Hal 'O Ween, a man who died 100 years ago on October 31. I told them that I didn't know how he died but it was slow, painful, and bloody. I also gave them a slip of paper with numerous body parts written. I explained that in some plastic cups I had Hal's "body parts" and that without looking in the cups, they had to touch the "body parts" and tell me what it really was. It was a competition so it was also a secret. I used peeled tomatoes for brains, apricots for ears, a hard boiled egg for a nose, ketchup & hot water for blood, spaghetti and olive oil for "worms...the only thing left of his body", pumpkin pulp for stomach & cockroaches, cinnamon sticks for bones, gum for teeth, and olives for eyes.
The first two or three classes were okay...they definitely got grossed out because they couldn't separate the idea from the feel of the objects...but they eventually got smart and started smelling their fingers to figure out what it was they were touching. So even though they were disgusted, they'd smell and say "oh, it's just tomato."
The last two days, however, I got smart. I added the pumpkin slime & seeds because I realized Spanish kids don't know what that feels like or smells like. And it would up the ante. God also smiled down upon me and helped me stumble upon the most awesome trick of all. Wednesday I bought the pumpkin slime & peeled the tomatoes, and left them in a plastic bag over night. I figured they'd be fine. And sure enough they were, perfectly fine to use the next day. Thursday I had five classes to do this activity with. In the first class, I pass around the "brains", aka the tomato, and the teacher is giving hints to help them, saying "remember you can't look but you can smell!"
And that's when it happens. One of the students touches the tomato and goes to smell his hand...I give him a look like, "Yeah? Now you know what it is??" and he almost hurls. He starts shaking his hand, saying how disgusting it is and throwing this hissy fit. I'm thoroughly confused. It's just a tomato...what a weenie. So I move on to the next kid (I got smart and held the cups in my hand as I walked around) and he does the same thing, moaning and complaining about how gross it is. I decide to take a whiff myself, it's just tomato, and holy hell did that think REEK. It smelled so disgusting that I can't even describe it. It was foul and raunchy and rancid. Rancid. It was rancid. I literally start cackling and howling with laughter because they were so petrified and disgusted. It was disgusting. It was a Halloween miracle. It took the game to a whole new level. The exact thing happened with the pumpkin....which made it that much better. I also would jump every once in awhile and gasp when someone would touch something "gross", like the tomatoes or spaghetti or pumpkin, which completely freaked them out. They were screaming, gasping, and all around terrified and having fun at the same time. It was SO FUNNY. Each class I was laughing maniacly, so proud of what I had done. Five or six students were jokingly complaining about how mean I am, asking "Chelsea, how do jew say "evil" in English?? Jew are eeveel!!" I just raised one eyebrow and gave them a smug look of approval. Then I started to add gorey details, explaining that the pumpkin seeds were cockroaches that had started to eat his decaying stomach...and while this all sounds horrifying, it was all in good fun except with one student and it wasn't even my antics that put him over the edge. He just couldn't separate the idea of body parts from what he was touching, so it literally made him sick to his stomach. I held out the cup of olives as eyes and he almost lost it. He was in the corner dry heaving for a few minutes and I tried to urge him to go to the bathroom but he was so grossed out he couldn't move, hahaha. Eventually he got past it but it was seriously the funniest thing I'd ever seen. It got to a point where the kids wouldn't stick their hands in the cups and would hesitate three or four times before finally taking the plunge. It was great, though, because all of the bratty kids who usually hide from participation were forced to finally do something and be involved. While they were completely grossed out, everybody came to class the next week and asked, "are we playing the Halloween game again?!" No sillies, Halloween is once a year! haha....they're starting to reflect me more and more, and I LOVE it.
Basically, it was the best Halloween ever, and I'm so freaking glad it won't be back for another 10 months.
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