Classroom Management

Halloween in the Art Room (Ep. 541)

October 27, 2026

Halloween is Jen Leban’s favorite holiday, so Art Ed Radio host Tim Bogatz invited her back on the show to talk about costumes, candy, creepy music, and the special kind of creative chaos that takes over schools in late October. Jen shares why Halloween feels different from other holidays, how she is recreating the dancing pumpkin meme this year, and what is happening inside The Art of Ed Community’s annual costume contest. Tim and Jen also debate whether costumes belong at school, swap favorite Halloween playlist recommendations, and share practical ways to turn Halloween energy into creative opportunities.

Full Episode Transcript Below.

Resources and Links

Transcript

Tim: Jen Leban is joining me now. Jen, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Jen: I’m good. It is my time of year.

Tim: I was just going to say that you are the perfect guest to have on during Halloween week because this is your holiday. It really is. On a personal level, why do you love Halloween so much?

Jen: There are a couple of different reasons. I like being able to dress up and pretend to be somebody else for a day. It’s acceptable to pretend, and it isn’t seen as weird.

The other reason might be controversial, but Halloween is one of the only holidays that isn’t family-oriented.

Tim: Totally fair.

Jen: A lot of people love Thanksgiving and Christmas because they’re about coming together with family. But if you have a difficult family situation—that’s the kindest way I can put it without going into unnecessary detail—I like a holiday that isn’t focused on that. Halloween is really just about having fun.

Kids come to your door, you give them candy, and everybody feels good. There isn’t as much weird pressure and tradition. It’s just fun. And I like creepy stuff, so that’s a bonus.

Tim: It all comes together. Do you still dress up for Halloween? Are you doing the costume thing? What are you doing this year?

Jen: Have we not discussed this, Tim?

Tim: I don’t think we have.

Jen: We did. You know this—you just forgot. You told me the story about how this first aired in Omaha on your news station. You saw the origin of my Halloween costume, and I’m so jealous.

Tim: Oh my gosh. I do remember now.

Jen: I’m dressing up as the very popular GIF of the dancing pumpkin guy—the person dressed all in black with the pumpkin mask.

Tim: I was going to say, the black bodysuit and pumpkin head doing a dance?

Jen: Yes. He dances to “Ghostbusters,” and he is a terrible dancer. I’m a terrible dancer, too, so I thought it would be funny.

This year, I made myself a pumpkin mask. I tried really hard to make it accurate—the face and the shapes—and I made it slightly too small for my head because his is slightly too small for his head. Then I got a black morph suit with just a hole for my face.

I don’t mind looking ridiculous. If anyone ran into us at NAEA in our paint jumpsuits at the Color House party, you know we don’t mind looking absolutely insane.

Some years, my costume is a little prettier. Last year, I was Miss Yvonne from Pee-wee’s Playhouse, so I got to be very sparkly and pretty. This year, it’s just Dancing Pumpkin Man.

Tim: I love it. It’s going to be so much fun. If anyone listening isn’t familiar with the dancing pumpkin GIF or video, I’ll make sure to put it in the show notes.

Jen: It’s also a really good reason for people to join the community because you won’t get to see how my costume turns out unless you’re in it.

Tim: We’ll talk about that in just a second. You also told me you were listening to your Halloween playlist. What’s on it?

Jen: It’s really long. I’ve accumulated it over the years. I have Apple Music, and every time a new song comes on that I think will work, I add it. It’s hours and hours long, and I love that I can put it on shuffle.

Anything you would expect is on it: “Thriller,” “Time Warp,” and “Monster Mash.” But then I find other songs that are spooky-ish or Halloween-adjacent.

I learned that Ryan Gosling, who is in Project Hail Mary, had this spooky goth band. I’m going to have to find the name of it. It was kooky, creepy chamber music. There’s a song called “My Body’s a Zombie for You,” and it has a children’s choir singing on it. It’s fantastic.

Tim: I’ll have to look it up. This is important.

Jen: It is important. One of my favorite new Halloween songs—not new, exactly, but new to my Halloween playlist—is “Dracula” by Tame Impala. I cannot stop listening to it.

Tim: It’s such an earworm. Tame Impala has a lot of catchy songs, but I feel like the artist just rhymed “Dracula” with “spectacular” and thought, “That’s great. I’m writing a whole song about this.”

Jen: I drive my kid insane because I sing it—and I sing it wrong. I sing, “Run from the sun like a Dracula,” and he says, “No.”

The band I was trying to remember is Dead Man’s Bones. It’s Ryan Gosling’s band. The song is this weird, creepy, sparse, haunting, kooky chamber music. It’s so good. I think I found it on Instagram. We’ll put it in the show notes.

Tim: Can I add one suggestion? It might already be on your list, but my son just discovered a song from my younger years: “A Nightmare on My Street” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Fantastic.

Jen: It’s on the list, for sure. Interestingly enough, I’ve been rewatching all of the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Tim: I thought you were going to say you were rewatching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Jen: That, too, could be okay. But Freddy Krueger’s one-liners are so entertaining. He’s such a jerk, but in the most entertaining way.

I think it’s the third movie where the practical effects are so bad that they’re good. It’s fun to watch, especially in the age of AI, because if they made those effects now, they would be very different—and not appealing in the same way.

There’s something about the artistry of those practical effects. There are all these little faces or souls on a pizza Freddy Krueger is eating. He stabs one and says, “Ricky, you little meatball,” and then eats it. It’s so corny, but you can’t help but laugh.

Maybe it’s because those movies were the scariest thing I could imagine when I was little. Now, as an adult, I can rewatch them and think, “Wait, this was the thing that scared me?” It’s funny to watch back.

Tim: I want to ask you about the community because I’ve been having a lot of fun in there this month. I feel like your love for Halloween has carried over into the community. Can you tell us about the costume contest or some of the fun things that have been happening this month?

Jen: It does. The theme for this month was “Tricks and Treats.” Of course, I took that to mean full Halloween, but not everything has to be witch-themed or seasonal.

It’s funny because I’m not really a seasonal teacher. I worked at a public school where we very much didn’t go all-in on holidays, and we had to avoid that. Now that I don’t have to be that way, I’m like, “Yay, Halloween!”

Earlier this month, we had Art Club and did a FLEX Curriculum lesson. We leaned into the “trick” theme by talking about tricking the eye and making tessellations.

For the “treats” theme, we’ve talked about things like food treats versus non-food treats and asked art teachers what they think. Today, we asked how people feel about costumes in school: hot or not?

Tim: That was one of my questions, too.

Jen: We cover all of it. We also have the costume contest, which we’ve been doing for years—even before the community. The Art of Education has had a costume contest, and now we host it in the community.

Tim: Can you give us the details for anyone hearing about it for the first time?

Jen: Absolutely. We opened it at the beginning of October, knowing entries probably wouldn’t come in until closer to Halloween. We like to give people a heads-up in case they want to plan their costumes.

There’s a post in the community that says “Costume Contest.” You comment on that post with a picture of your costume. That’s basically it.

You do need to be a community member to enter, so you have to join the community first. Then you can find the contest post and upload a picture of yourself. You might dress up for school, enter a costume contest the weekend before, or wait until Halloween day. We keep it open until November 2 so people have time.

Tim: We’ve seen some great costumes in the past—some spectacular ones. It’s worth searching the community to see what has been entered before.

Jen: Last year’s winner, Teresa, did a costume based on the phrase “feeling kind of sketchy.” All of her pieces looked like white paper with sketchy black edges. It was really fun.

The year before that, Frank won because he recreated the scene from the movie Ghost on a pottery wheel with another teacher from his school. The other teacher had a pumpkin head on.

Tim: It was awkward and spectacular at the same time.

Jen: Very high-school-teacher-coded humor. Fantastic.

Tim: Let me circle back to the question about costumes. How do you feel about costumes at school?

Jen: After seeing people’s reactions, I might be on the unpopular side because I love a costume. Anytime I can get dressed up, and anytime the kids can dress up, I think it’s fun.

Does it mess up the whole day? Are the kids wild? Yes. I understand why people don’t like it, but I think it’s my love of dressing up and pretending to be something else.

My other great love in life is drag queens. I love the idea of getting to be somebody else and having an alter ego. There’s something about an outer shell and an inner self. It feels like protective armor.

I can wear my Dancing Pumpkin Guy costume and dance like an idiot, and people think, “That’s what they do.” But if Jen started dancing like that, it would be embarrassing. A costume gives me protection. I don’t have to feel as self-conscious. Deep down, a lot of us are very self-conscious.

Tim: I appreciate the self-awareness.

I really hate costumes in the classroom. I appreciate the creativity, and some of my fondest memories are going to my kids’ elementary school for the costume parade. That’s so much fun, especially with kindergartners and first graders.

For you, the creativity and joy supersede the classroom issues. For me, costumes bring so many problems. They’re distracting and obnoxious, and I feel like I’m becoming a Halloween hater.

Jen: Based on the responses in the community, I don’t think you’re a hater. I think you’re in the majority.

I understand why people don’t like costumes. For some reason, though, because Halloween is my thing, it’s the one time of year when I say, “Whatever. I’m just going to give in.” It’s going to be crazy no matter what.

Kids are going to bring candy. There’s going to be a party. If you’re in elementary school, there’s probably a party in the afternoon, and the students were already excited in the morning. Wearing costumes isn’t suddenly going to make them behave.

If you’re in middle school, they might have a dance that night. They’re already wound up. It’s like seeing kids after a field trip. There’s nothing you’re going to do to calm that down. It’s going to be what it’s going to be, so let’s go along for the ride.

Tim: Understood. One benefit I do love about Halloween, especially as a secondary teacher, is telling students, “Have a great time, be safe, and be smart.” Then I add, “Make sure you bring me some candy tomorrow.”

Not every student will bring you candy, but enough do that it’s worthwhile.

Jen: I knew you were going there.

It works from kindergarten through high school. Even middle school students—I was shocked. They can seem like they care the least about their teachers, but I would say, “Have fun tonight. I really love peanut butter cups,” and the next day they would bring me some.

Tim: I love it. One last question: During Halloween week, when everything is chaotic, do you have advice for harnessing that energy and turning it into something productive? Do you have a favorite one- or two-day Halloween lesson?

Jen: That’s a good question. For all of my Halloween joy, I don’t think I ever did a Halloween lesson. I was a public school teacher, so we might have been working on a clay project, and a student would decide to make their slab project Halloween-themed. I would say, “Cool.”

Whenever a student planned a project for a holiday—something for Mother’s Day or Christmas—I would explain up front that we might not finish by that date. They could still make the project, but art doesn’t always finish when it’s supposed to.

I never made the project dependent on that deadline. I would warn students that it might not be done, but nothing was going to stop them from making it.

I taught on a schedule with split trimesters. Six times during the school year, I repeated the same sequence, so I didn’t teach seasonally. If it was this time of year and students wanted to incorporate Halloween, they could, but I didn’t have projects specifically designed for Halloween.

Tim: That makes sense. My go-to is a haunted house. We talk about the features of a cool haunted house: What do the roof angles look like? How do you make it look spooky? What do the windows look like?

Then students can get creative with what they put in the windows. Are there monsters, zombies, mummies, or cute pets? It’s a simple, one-day black-silhouette haunted house, but students can add interesting details in the windows and doorways.

Jen: If I taught elementary school, I would be really into that. I did teach elementary, but I was the librarian that year, not the art teacher. We did a lot of seasonal work with the books we chose and the activities we planned, so I would have been on board with that.

Another art project I see all the time is Tim Burton-inspired self-portraits.

Someone in the community mentioned doing zombie portraits, and I thought those were fantastic ideas. They don’t have to be Halloween-specific. You could do a zombie portrait in the spring if you want. Zombies are year-round—look at The Walking Dead and similar shows.

I’m not a zombie girl, but I appreciate their Halloweeniness, so I’m in favor.

Tim: I’ll add a quick plug for FLEX Curriculum. There are seasonal collections, including circle-weaving silhouettes and pop-ups—some of them are haunted-house-style projects. If you’re looking for something to do as we move further into fall, there are a lot of cool ideas and resources available.

If you’re a FLEX member, definitely check those out.

Jen: If you’re not a FLEX member but you are a community member, we did the pop-ups and a haunted house for Art Club last October. Those recordings are still available, so you can go back and watch them.

The free download for that lesson was available, just like the tessellation lesson this year. If you’re in the community, you can watch the recording, walk through the lesson with us, and make your own sample project. It’s all there.

Tim: A recording sounds like something else I need to put in the show notes. We’ll have extensive show notes.

Jen, thank you so much for coming on, sharing everything about your favorite holiday, and chatting with me today. Have a great rest of your Halloween week.

Jen: You, too.

Articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Halloween in the Art Room (Ep. 541)

Resources and Links

Transcript

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