Aunt Harriet’s Film Decency League by Becky Beard

               The entirety of this essay goes into great detail the acting background of all of the guest villains that appeared throughout the show’s three seasons.  I found it to be quite interesting because I had heard about all of the actors and actresses, but did not know a lot of their backstories.  Being asked to be on the show was an honor that few were fortunate enough to participate in.  The introduction to the essay included the fact that Robert Kennedy was turned down when he all but begged to be on the show.

               The writers, directors and producers knew exactly what they were doing when it came to casting well-known actors in the role of the villains.  By bringing such stars and Burgess Meredith and Vincent Price into people’s homes, it was almost a guarantee that viewers would tune in that week.  It was simple business; give the people what they want and they’ll keep coming back for more.  Similarly, I used a well-known character that my students adore in a lesson on character and setting just last week.

               We had been struggling on identifying character and setting with our basal reader’s story, ‘Gram and Me’.  It was a dry, inconsiderate text for my students and they were not able to identify a dock at the ocean as the setting for when the two characters were waving at the boat.  Rather than attempt to continue this act of futility, I reached for a book in the classroom library whose main character lives in a pineapple under the sea.  Stopping periodically to ask where the characters were and what they were doing there, it started to click.  When we returned to the story, the students were able to tell me that not only were they waving to boats on the ocean, they played chess on Gram’s front porch and began to relate by telling stories about what they do with their grandparents.

               Bringing a guest star into the classroom allowed pathways to open up in my students’ minds that aided in the acquisition, manipulation and production of a measured skill.