You are not a Werewolf or a Vampire!!!

An observation I have seen lately among teenagers and perhaps a few adults:

Last school year as I was on supervision duty I started to notice students beginning to carry around the same large novel. As I began to inquire, I learned about the Twilight Series. I also learned that a group of students had formed a book club called the Twilight Club and that some of the students in dance class were interpreting the novels through dance. I have since learned about all the other vampire and werewolf type novels. This seems to be the new Harry Potter phenomenon. After reading the first few Twilight novels to see what all the hype was, I thought it appealed mostly to girls. Oh no, I was mistaken! I have been surprised to find out how many boys have read the book and when given a choice to read The Outsiders or Twilight will often pick Twilight.

My point it that all of this werewolf and vampire craze has led to several bizarre behaviors among school children K-12 in the last little while. I believe that these incidents could have a link between reading these novels. On Wednesday I attended a monthly Assistant Principal of Discipline meeting for our school district. At the beginning of each meeting each Assistant Principal of Discipline shares major events that they have dealt with in the past month. City police and community outreach programs are also there to listen and also give a report of major incidents in the past month that might pertain to school safety. We share information on gang related incidents, tagging, fights, drug and alcohol use and sometimes a bizarre story. This month's meeting was all about werewolves and vampires. We had several incidents this month from Elementary, Middle and High School where students thought they were a werewolf or a vampire. While I can not share all details, suffice it to say, some of it was comical but left me puzzled how anyone could think that they might possibly be a werewolf or vampire.