Teachers Gone Wild

I am in the midst of a teacher training marathon. Last week we were in trainings and this week we are as well. On Monday, the school district decided to spice things up by sending several of our schools to a camp for some outdoor teacher training. Some groups did a high ropes course, some did a low ropes course and others played random children's games. I was a bit disappointed that my group did not get to do the high ropes. Oh well. I have done countless ropes courses and maybe the people who got to do it were doing it for the first time.

My group was full of teachers I had never met since the other teachers at my school defected to another group. I wanted to stay where I was assigned. I think the whole experience was supposed to be a team-building exercise. This was impossible since they mixed up the schools and assigned us to various groups. I guess it was supposed to be some sort of solo learning experience. We did classic low ropes activities like trying to get 17 people across small beams of wood from one wooden "island" to the next. We had to try to all balance on a swinging log. This meant getting a little intimate with these strangers. It was better than sitting through a boring inservice in an overly refrigerated room like we usually do.

Our group was one of the last to go to lunch so pretty much all the food was gone. After lunch, we played some children's games. We played "I have never." This is actually one of my favorite games, though with adults it can quickly get dirty. The faciliatator made up the statements this time so I didn't learn any dirty secrets about anyone other than if they'd been to Mexico or not. When you admitted to doing something, you got to go to the center of the circle and beat each other with pool noodles. I was into that twist.

My favorite game also involved a fun noodle. We were broken up into groups of three. I quickly got with the only two people I knew in my group- Mr. Bravo- the third grade bilingual reading teacher and Ms. Gonzales- the computer teacher. We had to link arms. Bravo was in the middle and with the ladies on either side. We were given a piece of pool noodle cut to the size and shape of a hockey puck. Ms. Gonzales held the hockey puck flat on her palm while I weilded the pool noodle. We had to try to use the noodle to knock off other teams' pucks, while protecting our puck. It was tons of fun. The facilitator told everyone to keep the pucks away from their faces. In true teacher fashion, many people did not listen. This really gave me no choice but to smack them in the face with my noodle to dislodge the puck. It was incredible! I am not exactly sure why I enjoyed hitting middle-aged ladies in the face with a noodle so much, but I did. We really dominated the competion and people were talking about us afterwards. I think they were afraid of me. I am not sure if it was a good or bad thing.

So, despite the superfulous waiting around that accompanies any large scale training, it was a good day. I whacked older ladies in the face with pool noodles under the pretense of playing a game, I got to know some other teachers somewhat intimately and in the end, for some reason, I along with all the other teachers were given fake gold medals with our school name on the back. Talk about a dream come true! I am pricing display cases for it as I type.