Halloween Differently

 I am neck-deep in report-card-writing mode, so this blog post (conceived at 11:30 pm the night before it is due to appear) will be short.

Saturday, October 31, 2020 was Halloween. At my house, we didn't even buy a pumpkin to carve into a jack-o-lantern this year. (We bought just one box of candy but we had no intention of giving any of it out.) We didn't put up decorations. My eldest got into costume briefly, but the only vaguely celebratory aspect of the day was when we went on Animal Crossing New Horizons to give out candy to our villagers. (I'll try and add those photos to this blog post later.)

At my school, we marked the day in a much more low-key way. In the past, we had Halloween parties, a school-wide parade in the gym, and lots of candies and costumes. The only thing that stayed the same = the costumes. Thankfully, the wonderful and resourceful Jennifer Balido-Cadavez volunteered to go from class to class to take photos at a distance of anyone who chose to pose in their costume. Over the lunch break, she compiled all of the images into a slide deck, which we watched from our individual classrooms. I used the slide deck as a media literacy investigation. I look forward to seeing what the students notice. 

Of course I still took the opportunity to dress up, although I did not bring two costumes like I usually do.

Even though I am "inordinately fond of costumes", I'm not actually one of those teachers that do tons of holiday-themed activities. For me, I worry about the equity issues as well as the depth of the thinking and learning (or lack thereof) that connects with those activities. I even warned my students that I hadn't planned any Halloween games or tasks other than the media literacy one related to the costume slide show.

Still, I felt bad that students in Toronto would be denied the opportunity to go trick-or-treating. Therefore, I need to thank Steve Tong for helping me with my "no food treats" by offering me some of his Play-Doh tins to use as student presents. I also bought some pencils and notebooks. The students really enjoy the clay and made some cute sculptures.

One of my students even took it upon himself during his "Two Minute Exclusive Conversation Talk Time" (yes, it's been reduced from 5 - it's too hard to fit them all in) to thank me for being so thoughtful and giving the students these small gifts.

Halloween was definitely different this year.