Helloween, Too Much of a Good Thing, and a Rank Odor

Teacher Magazine ’s take on education news from around the Web, Oct. 28-Nov. 3.

It’s not the goblins, ghouls, and ghosts that scare teachers when October draws to a close—it’s The Day After, when those trick-or-treaters show up back at school either stoked on caffeine and sugar or about to crash from the same. “Sugar rush day” is what English teacher Melanie Ontiveros calls it. Her Morrill Middle School students in San Jose, California, who’ve been up all night demanding junk food and gobbling it wholesale ever since “are going to be antsy and inattentive,’’ she adds. Strategies for dealing with a class full of juiced-up kids vary. “Some teachers will hand out leftover Tootsie Roll Pops to serve as a kind of methadone,’’ says Robert Wright, a Morrill colleague. Although he hopes for the best each November 1, Wright and others tend to put it in the same “probably going to be unproductive” category as the day before winter break and the last day of school. Some districts, such as nearby Milpitas Unified, don’t even try to educate children on Halloween Hangover Day, instead making...