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Well, we did it! This afternoon, we managed to convince the stu-
dents that we are thoroughly demented and held a funeral for our
card catalog. As this has been our Right-to-Read Week, this
seemed to be a fitting celebration for our online catalog and to
wean everyone from the card catalog. If anyone is interested,
here is what we did --
1. Planned with the Drama teacher, who assigned the design of
the funeral service to her Drama 1 class. After raiding the
costume department, we had appropriately attired funeral direc-
tors, ushers, clergy and eulogizers. This counted as part of
their performance grade for this quarter.
2. Contacted the jazz band director who provided the jazz band
and its musical skills -- great for atmosphere. They played
some slowed down tunes such as "St. Louis Woman," which didn't
have much to do with the card catalog but sounded great for the
service.
3. The art classes designed tombstones, really clever ones.
Two of the best, I think were for "Otto Biography" and "Kat
A. Log." Also, one student drew a portrait of the card cata-
log, which was displayed during the ceremony.
4. The foods classes provided baked goods for the reception
afterwards. We provided the punch.
5. Invitations were sent out to the other schools, the admini-
strators, school board members, the public library, local
(suburban) newspapers, and one of the TV stations.
6. Mourners were from one of the other classes the Drama
teacher has, the one that would have been held during the
funeral service.
7. Props: we used a coffin from the community theatre's
production of _Evita_ and someone loaned us a funeral floral
arrangement.
At the end of the "ceremony" the mourners filed by the
"deceased" and pulled out drawers from the catalog (shades
of _The Breakfast Club_ here!) and dumped the contents into
the casket.
It was a lot of work, and we're glad we managed to pull it
off. Besides, it sure did brighten up a Friday afternoon!
Sorry, this seems to have run on longer than I planned.
It's time to pack up and head on home.
--
Karen Naftzger (gk751@cleveland.freenet.edu)
Rocky River High School
20951 Detroit Road phone: (216) 356-6806
Rocky River, Ohio 44116 fax: (216) 331-2189
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