All The Lovely Bad Ones

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. You may have heard the term “poorhouse” in history or literature. What is a poorhouse? By extension, what do you think the term “poor farm” means? Generally, in what historical time period do you think poor farms existed?

Teaching Suggestion: Many online sources use both terms (“poorhouse” and “poor farm”) along with “almshouse” and “indoor relief” to describe the places where the poor lived and received aid. Class discussion on this topic might extend to living conditions and potential injustices and dangers of the poorhouse/poor farm system. Brief online investigation will reveal to students that poor farms were a widespread institution in the history of the United States. Connect to the novel by explaining that the story’s setting, Fox Hill Inn in Vermont, was once a fictitious poor farm.

• This article on poor farms in Vermont comes from the Vermont Historical Society.
• In this article, the New England Historical Society offers information on “A Poorhouse in Each New England State.”

2. Many cultures use ghost stories to teach moral lessons. If you were a ghost, what lesson would you want to teach to people who are still living?

Teaching Suggestion: This question is meant to develop students’ interest in the subject matter of the story while introducing them to the idea that ghost stories have purposes beyond entertainment. Some students may answer in specific ways (e.g., “I would teach my brother not to touch my games”) while others might answer in more general terms (“I would teach people to be kind”). Help students to see that even very specific answers can be generalized to show universal moral principles by asking “why” questions (“Why shouldn’t your brother touch your games? Why is that wrong?”). This is excellent practice for students learning how ideas that apply to specific situations and characters in a text can be generalized into the universal messages we call “theme.”

• an essay by author Kate Elizabeth Orgera in which she discusses three types of lessons taught by ghost stories
• a Colin Dickey article for CNN on why people still need ghost stories

Short Activity 

You might have heard ghost stories from many different sources; one of the most common sources is people sharing scary stories around the campfire. Imagine that you and your small group are planning a campfire, and that each of you has agreed to come prepared with a ghost story certain to scare everyone.

If you already know a ghost story, great! You will have a little research and note-writing time, though, in case you want to look a story up online. Make some notes about the main ideas of the story; then, think about how to tell the story in the scariest way possible:

• What details can you add to make the story even creepier?
• In what order should you tell things—can you arrange the ideas so that you give some hints of scary, mysterious things that will happen later, without giving away the surprises?
• How can you use the pace and tone of your voice to make the story spookier and more suspenseful?

Teaching Suggestion: This activity is an opportunity to get students thinking about how a good story should be told. It will also give students some public speaking practice in a low-stakes environment. Consider preparing a few appropriate stories in bullet-list form ahead of time for students whose language abilities might make this task a daunting one—then, instead of spending time finding and preparing a story, they can spend their prep time practicing and getting some feedback from you. If your teaching situation permits, you might arrange students’ seats into small circles or let those who are able sit on the floor. If you have the time and resources, students can craft “fires” from art supplies—you might even offer students “campfire snacks” to add to the fun. Be sure to give students direction about the length of their stories so that they are appropriately challenged within the time constraints.

• a 9-minute YouTube video by a young storyteller who explains how his understanding of storytelling evolved
• a brief tipsheet for young storytellers from the WHEEL Council