I wonder if parents know how much teaching time is wasted on Halloween. Sure, it’s fun and all but it is a real drag on momentum just forming around this time of year. It is probably most intrusive with the youngest school kids. It seems by sixth grade, walking around school in a plastic painted bag with lipstick on has lost its luster. They just want candy.
This year, it is particularly glaring. Halloween used to be on October 31st. Through the years, the 31st has become the day adults celebrate Halloween and kids do it the Sunday before. This year, the schools are having Halloween a whole week early--tomorrow, the 24. Why? Because people have come to expect schools to take care of this Halloween for them.
People may not understand that for elementary teachers, Halloween starts around September 15, at least as a main topic of conversation and excitement. Some classrooms begin to make masks or decorations or Halloween stories or something so everyone has at least one thing (sorry Jehovah’s Witnesses) Halloween. The orange and black paper stock is depleted by the 10-15 and gone after the 20th. Even teachers who swear they aren’t going to let the class get distracted for a whole month give in when the time comes. We’ve traditioned ourselves into it and now we can’t let go. We’d feel too guilty.
Aside from the zany classroom atmosphere, there is the day itself. Some parents send costumes still in the plastic bags. Others send kids with a make-up supply thinking we can apply it at a convenient time, which is never. One year we had a kid come to school with his packaged get-up. Two of us teachers spent almost half and hour trying to get the blood circulating around through the tubes in his costume. It was clearly a dud, but this child really could have used the positive attention this horrible costume would have given him. It had its own parade in the sink at the back of our classroom. One child devastated.
We also have to pin skirts up, hair dress, apply face paint, make masks fit on faces so little that no elastic will hold it anywhere but around the hopeful neck of that poor kid trying to hike up fabric with one hand while pushing that mask up with the other.
There are always parents who come to help and far that we are truly grateful. They bring the kind of enthusiasm dressers should have on this day of days. Teachers just want to get it over with.
In the future, if trick or treating falls on a weekend the Friday before which is a day off school, please don’t do anything to accommodate us. Making sure children are trained in the traditions of non-nationalistic holidays shouldn’t be our jobs. If families want to have a Halloween parties, they should have one. Teachers, even those who teach the little ones, have enough to do trying to get through our curriculum requirements without giving up days for Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and even Christmas and Easter in some districts. I would, however, lobby for April Fool’s Day to be made a national holiday. That one, our school traditions have completely prepared us for.
