The calendar months slowly creep up to the spookiest time of the year. With the new school year just starting for Mrs. Altimore, as she’s still learning her students’ way of learning, she always makes her assignments interactive as it will help with future projects. Although the Christmas cheer is technically her favorite time of the year, something about October 31st calls for her attention when it comes to teaching.
Before becoming a freshman teacher, she worked as an 8th grade English teacher. Twenty years ago, Mrs. Altimore was on what felt like a never ending mission to incorporate fun into writing lessons, and coincidentally, Halloween was around the corner. A light bulb went off– what if she incorporated creepy theater into writing short stories and narrative poems?
Creepy theater is a fun, scary tradition in Mrs. Alitmore’s room where students recite their writing in the dark with a flashlight, as witches and animatronics move next to them. She expresses “as soon as I left the middle school I thought I would never do it again, but then when I came to the high school and I was teaching the Odyssey, I decided that I could still do it. It really helped my students use adjectives, adverbs and descriptive writing.”
Yet, the Halloween set up doesn’t appear magically overnight. It takes hours of dedication for her classroom to turn into the spooky haven her students know it as today. “I really enjoy having my former students come back and help me. I get to see them and find out what’s going on in their lives and they get to help me put this crazy thing together,” she said smiling. After the dark curtains rise, the room slowly starts to follow the Halloween aura. When the base is done, the student helpers are able to add their own touches to Mrs. Altimores special room, from pumpkins to hanging ghosts and witches. “Halloween tends to have the eeriness, the adjectives, the feelings, the tone, the mood all that kind of stuff and that’s how this all started but actually just blew up,” Altimore explains.
When the students walk into their newly transformed room, they see Mrs. Altimore decked out in a festive outfit and low music to set the mood. Anxiousness slowly fills the air as students hope to recite their poems and touch the audience in a scary, fun way. When it comes to presenting in front of a crowd, Mrs. Altimore knows how her students feel all too well. “It’s in the dark and it gives them that confidence to be able to share something out loud.”
Many things changed as Mrs. Altimore transitioned to becoming a highschool teacher, but one thing remains constant: her love for the traditional creepy theater. Although Mrs. Altimore loved the diversity and creativity from the both schools, she found that high schoolers gave her a fresh perspective as to what fun truly looks like in writing, and she remains excited for the next years to come.
As Mrs. Altimore’s annual creepy theatre is only a start for the new ideas in the future, this will truly be an unforgettable experience for many incoming freshmen.
