I believe in celebrating Halloween like a celebrate my birthday, over a period of time. Anytime I get to dress up more than once in order to observe Halloween, I’m very happy. I don’t know if there’s any deep, pyschological meaning behind dressing up as someone else for a period of time other than using another creative outlet, but since this past Halloween fell on a school day, I rose to the occasion.
Even though I’ve taught at my present high school for three years, I’m still not clear as to whether I’m actually allowed to dress up for Halloween. Nonetheless, I’ve done it three times now and not once have I’ve been talked to about it.
This particular Halloween, two of the principals walked into my first period class in order to do an unannounced observation. They had their laptops tucked under their arms, but seemed disoriented when they looked at me.
One of them whispered in my direction, “Oh, she’s not here.”
As I walked toward him, I whispered back, “Who’s not here?”
At that moment, I had come close enough for both administrators to see that I was indeed there, but just in disguise. They laughed, looked around and noticed that the students were testing and walked back out without bothering to evaluate me. Normally, if the students are taking a quiz or test, the administrators don’t bother to type up an evaluation since they want to observe teaching.
Yet, that was one of my favorite experiences of the day since most people don’t immediately recognize me if I wear a wig. Many of my students initially thought that I was a substitute teacher as well. In addition to the wig, which is slowly developing dreadlocks of its own since I don’t have a comb or brush, I wore a dress, make up and had my nails painted.
I usually don’t bother with getting my fingernails painted since I’m very active, but my manicurist convinced me to try gel polish, which dries with the help of UV light and lasts for two weeks. I must admit that it is very impressive stuff, but with my busybody self, this polish has only lasted a week. I’m going back to the salon to get it removed since regular nail polish remover isn’t strong enough to do the trick. Nonetheless, this industrial-strength polish has been a far less frustrating experience than the usually cheap ass polish that chips mere hours after having it done.
Now that Halloween is officially over, I’ll just have to rely on my usual expressions of creativity through my writing, dancing, painting and whatever creative opportunities I can eek out of my teaching, given the district’s climate of pyschopathic testing.