I see shapes in the wallpaper!

I just recently finished reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perking Gilman. It's one of my favorite creepy stories and it was included in a thematic unit we did on Insanity and Madness (which I half-jokingly told the kids we were doing because they were driving me crazy... and I have serious doubts about their sanity much of the time and thought they could relate). They enjoyed the story and got really into the idea of the spiraling madness of someone who sees shapes in the wallpaper and winds up creeping around her room by the end of the story.

I am also the mean teacher who has instituted strict lunch detentions where the kiddos have to sit and face the wall with their lunches on their lap.

So I had a few students on lunch detention one day and they called me over to inform me that they saw fungal shapes and faces of other students in the bumpy patterns of the wallpaper. Having them joke around in an intelligent way about a story they had read made me infinitely happy. After that I had several students see a hole that had developed in the wall and quote "The Yellow Wallpaper" without prompting, mentioning that their "shoulders fit so nicely in the smooch in the wall." These are, of course, relatively creepy actions, but these were some of my best teaching moments. When my students are putting these works of great literature into their lives and seeing them not just when the page is open, that's one of the reasons I am doing this.

Mostly I am a giant literary nerd and when my students are making literary jokes, I feel that my life is complete.