Halloween Lessons

Last year, I was largely unprepared for Halloween. Christmas similarly caught me off-guard. It was only after coming back in January that I realized how much more I could have done with those holidays. This summer I spent a fair amount of time planning what would hopefully be a better Halloween lesson.

The first thing was what to teach the students. I spent most of the class time laboriously explaining the history of Halloween, which means that was pretty much all the students walked away with. Drawing from last year's experience and the help of the teachers, I streamlined the explanation so that it was more interesting and took up less time.

I also found more pictures of jack-o-lanterns, and gave the students a handout with an outline of a pumpkin so they could make their own design. I bought several kabocha--Japanese green pumpkins--to demonstrate pumpkin carving. I cut one open in several of my classes, and asked for volunteers to scoop out the seeds. (Curiously, nobody wanted to...) I also brought in candles, and lit one inside the jack-o-lantern with the lights turned off. The effect was amazing: everyone was mesmerized by it.

For my four-student senior writing class, I brought in pumpkins for each of them. Kabocha are small enough to carve with a butterknife, so I didn't have to worry about them injuring themselves with X-Actos. Erika was absent that day. Takashi carved a cute face into his. Koji and Misa, the best boy and girl in the class, are always competing. (It reminds me a lot of how I used to act in middle school with Anna in Crestview.) Koji decided to carve a jack-o-lantern to look like Misa, and set out making an intentionally ugly face. Misa, unfazed, returned the favor: she made a pig out of hers, naming it Koji.

I love these kids.

My English club girls--and practically all my other students--refused to touch the pumpkins. Everyone said they smelled awful, despite their being fresh, and nobody volunteered to come help me scoop out the guts. Nobody, that is, except my Toyotama seniors. Misa dove right into hers, not even trying to keep it off her hands.


Just about the only aspect of last year's lesson to survive intact was the candy. I made sure to teach them all how to say 'Happy Halloween!' and 'Trick or treat!' I taught them the literal meaning of the expression, where it comes from, and the fact that people hardly if ever mean it as a threat now. After each class, I gave candy to the students, but only if they said 'Trick or treat!'