Often, during the beginning of a school year, stress and an overwhelming feeling of being burdened with work and home causes teachers to lose sight of the team spirit that makes working together fun. When summer is over and school starts, teachers with children of their own get besieged by scheduling their children’s activities and family time around school schedules, work schedules and dinner time, not to mention homework time, studying time, their own reading for work time, spouse or self time, baths, laundry, clean-up, and maybe sleep.
All this stress can cause a normally passive and loving teacher or administrator to snap at her co-workers unnecessarily or to express anger in situations during which it was not appropriate. Luckily for all involved, a holiday sneaks upon us at the right time to rekindle the friendships and appreciation for our fellow teachers by reminding us just how fun our co-workers are and how life may get busy but fun at work eases that burden.
Halloween is not only a holiday full of candy and merriment, but it is also a time for creativity and decorations that scream or boo and make others laugh for a momentary loss of tension and hassles. To help a day care or school department, such as Junior High or English, learn to play together again, create school or center-wide Halloween contests.
Best Hallway Decoration
Have the teachers and their students decorate the hallway just outside their door. The hallway could contain a special scarecrow designed and named by the class or classroom art hung from the ceiling and walls.
As with any contest, set limits and possibly a theme to keep the competition friendly and light-hearted. A scarecrow could end up looking like an administrator who would not be pleased without some regulations for the teachers to abide by.
Ideas for hallway decorations must remain parent, passer-by, and most importantly student-friendly. Having PG art and scarecrows eliminates scaring younger students who may pass through the hall and parents who may need to dodge hanging objects.
Best Door Decoration
It is fun for students of all ages to cut out spiders from black construction paper and hang them on yarn webs. Creating a door decorating contest, in which the students would vote for the winner, is a way to include the students in the classroom contest.
Many classroom doors have glass windows which can be painted with water colors or covered with one layer of tissue paper to allow for administrators to continue monitoring the classrooms. The door decoration contest also restrains the artwork and prevents complaints from passers-by.
Best Classroom Decoration
Setting up a ‘best classroom decoration’ contest also includes the children in the departmental competitions and teaches the students to take pride in their work which will be seen by all the other students.
This type of contest can quickly become very large and expensive if the teachers get creative. It is a good idea to set restrictions and price limits to keep the decorations in check.
A classroom decoration contest must not overtake the teaching of the students. Any free time at the end of the day or extra time after a fast lesson can be used for decorating, but the lessons must continue as normally as possible.
Best Halloween Themed Week
A way to involve the children, guarantee the contest will not interfere with lessons and still create a friendly competition is to have a Halloween themed week contest.
Create a pre-chosen list of a Halloween theme for each day of one full week. Make Monday’s theme monsters where all the students dress up as their favorite monster and the teacher gives lessons on green footprints turned into Frankenstein’s Monster heads for the infants through preschool and writing a monster story for the older students. The rest of the days in the week would have similarly themed days.
Examples of themes are; early Halloween foods, costume design, and historic Halloween events. Teach the students measuring, baking, language, reading, color coordination, history, and chronological order in one week.
Give a Prize
The winner of the contest wins class pizza or maybe a donation of $50 for classroom purchases from a pre-determined school supply store.
Be creative in your contests and make sure to focus on camaraderie and remind your teachers and co-workers of how much fun working together is when stress is not a factor.
A. L. Fetherlin - Author of "Brynn, the Exorcist" and former day care teacher who uses her home as an experiment in woodworking and building projects.
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