Can you see the teeth? I mean can you SEE the TEETH?!

“GIVE ME SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT…” One of the things we focused on during our ‘prep’ weeks before Halloween was teaching the kids the ever-popular Halloween chant: Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear! Fancina was the one (not me) who suggested/insisted we teach them the whole chant.  We told them that when we go trick-or-treating in class, they will have to say that in order to get candy.  Now that I think about it, we might have given a slightly skewed account of an American Halloween, thinking that all kids threaten to pull down people’s underwear whenever they go trick-or-treating.  So sorry in advance if you ever have one of my students knocking on your door and pulling down your skivvies.  

Masked Maiden and the Vampire

Before I dive into this post, I’d like to point out that I haven’t gotten this dressed up for Halloween since I was a Newsie in 8th grade.  Every day this week I was something different, partially because my vampire teeth only came with enough putty for one use, but that allowed for some creativity on my part.  So keep an eye out for the different forms of Dani.

That said, the second class of Halloween week consisted of 3 things:

1. Halloween parade around the school.  This really meant us disturbing several other classes because who can pay attention to their teacher when witches, ghosts, and a strange (and deathly-looking) white girl are roaming the halls?  Lets just say there was a lot of screaming involved in these processions. 

2.  Then students came back to the room for trick-or-treating.  They could come up to me, Fancina, or one of the teaching interns who were helping us, say the ‘trick-or-treat’ chant and get candy.  Now I understand that some kids couldn’t remember the whole chant, so I would often prompt them or have them repeat after me.  There was of course the one kid who would simply yell “blah blah blah! blah blah blah! blah blah blah blah blah blah blah” (but substitute ’blah’ for the Chinese equivalent) after me.  I gave him candy anyway.

3.  The last part of the day was the ‘best costume’ contest.  Fancina and I would pick 3 or 4 of our favorites, and then the students would vote among them.  Now some costumes were kind of lame, but I have to admit that others were incredibly creative.

Uncle Harry (??) with a golf club. and a knight.

Pumpkin, Harr(iette) Potter, and a cute little devil

My volleyball class was probably the most excited about the day. They got really into scaring the little kids in their classrooms as we paraded around the school.

My scary volleyball class!

Boxman might be one of my favorites. Also, the mask with the blood that circulates throughout it was a popular choice among all my students. I saw about 10 of them during the week.

Notice the knife through my head...

and the blood dripping down my face...at one point I was sweating so much that the blood (which was like cherry cough syrup) ran into my eye, blinding me for half a class.