Is it just me or does one become a veteran teacher far too soon in one’s journey? Meaning, how did I get so old?! Well, as scary as that is, it’s better than the alternative, right Poe?
Allow me to present the context: through December I have a student teacher, and boy oh boy am I happy to know her. She’s going to be a fantastic teacher, wants to do well and jump right in. This has been an especially chaotic start to the new school year for me: our administration takes great care and time to balance the master schedule, so it’s had to change multiple times to get it right. When one considers how many of our students need what is called “Essentials” in our district (it’s probably called that other places, too), it changes the dynamic quite a bit. To the point, for me personally I gave up my planning period and will be teaching six periods a day, so having an eager student teacher/intern will be enormously helpful.
One of the requirements of her program is a three-day scoped lesson, and since she and I are both enthusiastic fans of all things macabre and October, we sat down to discuss a possible text. One of the first short stories I planned on handing over to her was The Monkey’s Paw. I’ve used this story for many years and add the Vimeo film, too. It’s accessible in terms of understanding themes/tropes (be careful what you wish for! Magic has a cost! Be grateful for what you have!) and is grand, classic fun.
And that was the problem.
As I am describing the story, written in 1902, with its archaic language and cultural tropes (exotic foreign lands! Grand Fakir! Seargent Major in the grand India wars….!) her eyes seemed to glaze over, not in boredom, but in overwhelmed fear: these old stories are not this generation’s stories. She’s two years older than my oldest son, and if I may make one sweeping generalization about millennials it’s not that they haven’t read the classics, but perhaps have rejected them because they are not multicultural or diverse. Coming from my old white lady perspective, many of my beloved stories are from a narrow Victorian smelling salts place of overly tight corsets and ladies locked in boxes/towers/coffins.
The Monkey’s Paw is not a place to start when you’re a 23-year-old student teacher.
I put the word out on the Notice and Note page:
I’m going to the well once again — 🙂 I have a great student teacher, and many of the classic horror stories are not in her wheelhouse. We’re thinking of her three-day filmed lessons of doing RL8.3 and a scary story. Things like The Monkey’s Paw or The Raven are not comfortable for her necessarily, so was wondering if anyone knows of poetry or short story horror that’s more contemporary? The guiding question is ‘what do we know as readers that the character(s) don’t know?’ among others. Please and thank you–
To all of you: you honor me with your amazing resources and suggestions. What I think we all struggled with though was at the heart of my question: something more contemporary. I should have just flat-out said: diverse. Multicultural. Not Dead White Guy. Not that there’s a darn thing wrong with dead white guys. Those are some of my favorite guys.
From Notice and Note Educator Experts:
But these are wonderful pieces of literature, and though I’ve used most of them extensively, have some new ones to check out:
The Landlady by Roald Dahl (short story)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (used this for years) (novel)
The Wife’s Tale by Seamus Heaney (poetry)
The Lady or the Tiger by Frank Stockton
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
The Right Kind of House by Henry Slezar
Reverse Insomnia – not sure (?)
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Cornell
The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Highwayman (romantic/gothic/poetry) Alfred Noyes
Darkness Creeping Neil Shusterman (collection)
All in a Summer Day by Ray Bradbury
Twilight Zone/Monsters are Due on Maple Street
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
Three Skeleton Key by George G. Toudouze
Heading Home by Ramsey Campbell
The Severed Hand by Wilhelm Hauff
Under the Weather by Stephen King
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (I still have students trying to hand me pieces of paper with black dots)
What I found:
http://theweek.com/articles/458062/9-contemporary-horror-stories-read-right-now — ooh there are some good ones here
http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2015/10/19/diverse-horror-folklore-ya/ — just bought some Rin Chupaco
http://www.livescience.com/48515-10-haunted-house-ghost-stories.html – these are ancient stories from around the world
And of course, there are always quick films. I have film versions of almost all the classic stories above.
Lights Out – Who’s There Film Challenge (2013) from David F. Sandberg on Vimeo.
Bloody Cuts/Who’s There Film Challenge -some are NOT appropriate, but some are pretty great.
I want to thank you all for your suggestions and insights: it reminds me again that we cannot do this alone. It’s up to my student teacher to poke around and find one that feels comfortable for her now, just like all of us have and had to do. She’s going to craft and curate her own stories to tell — and I can’t wait to hear them!
PS http://onebooklane.com/mistletoe-bride-short-story-kate-mosse/
and
The Life of Death from Marsha Onderstijn on Vimeo.
All of them work, but she’ll have to see what’s comfortable for her. Good suggestion!
What about ‘Night of the Living Dead’ the play, the script? Would that work? The whole story is about fear of the unknown, the other, and in the end, the black man gets shot by the sheriff. Pretty contemporary themes.