Clockwise from left: junior Daniel Kirwan chows down on pumpkin pie, junior Chauncey Liffiton paints sophomore Ronnie Bonacorda’s face, two pumpkins carved by students in the pumpkin carving contest.

“Drop the chair! Drop the chair!”

Already there were pumpkin bits, plastic bottles and various other materials splattered all over the parking lot. Tech Ed teacher Kevin Daney finally appeased the crowd below and with a count down of “3! 2! 1!”…off shot the chair and with it a poor, helpless pumpkin strapped on for dear life.

The thrill of pumpkin torture on Bad Day to be a Pumpkin, held by the bus loop during WJ’s lunchtime Halloween festivities, was accompanied by the sounds of the choir, students bopping along to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and of course, the pumpkin pie eating contest. Yet, what lies beneath the loud and messy Halloween event is the main reason why lunch was extended an extra 14 minutes.

Many, and if not most students, who attended the event are unaware of the fact that certain festivities of Bad Day, such as dropping pumpkins off the roof and showing off decorated cupcakes, are viewed by teachers as actual learning.

The pumpkin drop event, conducted by some of Daney and Tech Ed teacher Tom Martin’s students, was an alternative to the pumpkin catapult their students built in previous years.  Although the unavailability of fields prevented the popular catapult event from taking place, Daney thought of the pumpkin drop based off a simple project his students are assigned every year, the raw egg drop.

“[When] we were done with that project and saw [it, we thought], let’s do it again and use pumpkins to throw off the school,” he said. “So it’s a standard engineering project.”

Art resource teacher Stephanie Ellis, who started Bad Day with the rest of the art department, had some of her ceramics students carve pumpkins as an assignment.

“It’s fun [and] we can justify it because the kids are still learning,” said Ellis. “It’s awesome when you have administrative support; that makes a big difference.”

Even with many staff members and the administration’s support, many students were surprised to hear that Bad Day is thought of as a learning experience outside the classroom.

Sophomore Naomi Lisse, who attended Bad Day both this year and last year, was unaware of the educational twist.

“Last year, you could see the catapult the tech classes made so it was much more evident [that there was] learning outside the classroom,” said Lisse.

Teachers aren’t surprised to hear that students don’t see the academic ties to Bad Day.

“[The students] don’t realize they’re learning, but they are,” said Daney. “So if you ask them to explain stuff they learned, they can only probably say a word or two, but they learned a lot more than they can tell.”

This three-year-old tradition originally came to Ellis and the art department as a hair-brained idea.

“How many ways can we torture a pumpkin?” said Ellis. “We can carve it, cut it up; we can catapult it, drop it, mash it up and make it into pumpkin cupcakes.”

For Ellis, what would help turn the event into an even bigger success and opportunity for even more students to experience the hands on learning it provides would be the additional participation of other departments at WJ.

“I would love if the other departments jumped on board,” said Ellis. “If you can incorporate learning into a fun activity, won’t the kids learn that much more?”