Tomorrow is Halloween and the natives (students) are getting restless. Â I know this because I spent many a Halloween doing my best to keep my young charges busy as they squirmed like they had ants in their pants. Â And they were teenagers!
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Before standardized testing and its ensuing universal lesson plans where all the teachers of the same tested subject in a school district have to teach exactly the same thing on the same day, and before we became so sensitive and politically correct (Is that a run-on sentence?), I tried to add a little bit of spooky fun to my classroom at Halloween. Â I definitely put up Halloween decorations–remember those cute little cardboard cutouts of jack o’ lanterns and witches and goblins? Â It never even crossed my mind that someone might object. Â It was all harmless fun when I was growing up.
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I also brought in trick-or-treat candy if I could afford it, and when I taught English I would find a good scary classic film like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or “Frankenstein” or “The Pit and the Pendulum” that we could actually do literary analysis on. Â I lit a jack o’ lantern while the movie was showing. Â It was a nice change from the ordinary lecture and notes.
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For a Halloween biology lesson I would bring a pumpkin from home and we would actually take it outside and carve it, identifying the different parts of the plant, fruit, and seeds. Â Then we would place a candle inside once we returned to the classroom–or we had a pumpkin carving contest if enough students brought pumpkins. Â Their carving had to relate to something we had studied in biology.
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Nowadays there is so much pressure to prepare students for testing that teachers rarely have time to insert these kinds of activities into their lessons. Â Or, if they do, they must get permission from a department chairperson or principal to deviate from the prescribed course of study. Â I think we have lost a little of the fun we used to have in classrooms for the sake of test scores. Â It’s even more important for parents to take time to do some of these fun things at home to provide these experiences for their children.
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I heard tonight of a local group of school district superintendents who are meeting to come up with alternatives to “teaching to a test.” Â I hope they succeed in not only convincing our legislators that the emphasis in education is wrong, but that they come up with a way to lead the change.
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XOXO
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