Cows and Pirates

Yesterday was a weird day.  Apparently, our school thinks that teachers like the adrenaline rush of having completely unannounced activities in the middle of classes that we’ve meticulously planned for.

In the morning, upon arriving at school, I was told that they were going to have a 5K run for the kids who wanted to participate, and that it was taking the place of first period, and that I was going to be helping point the kids in the direction they should go.  What?  Okay, fine.  I will confess to muttering angrily to myself and anyone who cared to listen, but okay.  Then I was told that this whole there’s-a-race-so-we-cancel-classes thing is going to happen at least twice more this semester, and I decided to go hang out with the middle schoolers because they at least have hormones and a still-developing prefrontal cortex to blame for the fact that they’re crazy.

About 10 minutes after hearing about the race, I got dropped off on a godforsaken back road next to some cows.  Also, I was given a broom for, and I quote, “beating off the dogs if any should try to bite you.”  Let’s be clear, I teach at one of the best schools in the city.  I teach entirely in English to intelligent, motivated, upper-class students.  And I was given a dog-beating stick.  I’m just as confused as anyone.

Wasn't joking about the cows.

I did manage to grab a book on the way out, so I started reading (keeping an eye out for bloodthirsty dogs).  Ten minutes later, the wave of runners from 5th to 12th grade came by.  At the end of the group came three girls walking along arm-in-arm.  I’m not totally convinced that they’d been told it was a race, but they were hilarious.

I was positioned at the top of the loop, so I stayed to direct runners back to the school when they’d completed the big circle.  I read for a while and chatted with the lady whose cows I was standing beside, then the clear winner of the race came sprinting along.  He whipped by, followed by the second and third place guys.  Students trickled by, and a surprising number of them chose to update me on how many times they’d thrown up along the way.  Charming, guys; move it along.  Toward the end, I was also told that “Niki’s dead.  He’s in a truck.”  (Spoiler alert:  Nicholas wasn’t dead, just tired.)  When everyone had passed me (including the walking girls, still very happily in last place), I walked back to the school.

You can kind of see the kids' backs.  I'm still awful at taking pictures.

Because of the fact that none of the new teachers knew about the morning interruption, we did some quick class-swapping because the 10th graders had a test today.  I ended up with my students taking a math test instead of a Much Ado About Nothing quiz, which was a little weird considering that I still struggle with long division.

My 8th graders just finished reading Treasure Island, so, in an effort to be the kind of teacher that Pinterest tells me I should be, I planned a treasure hunt.  I divided the kids up into pirates and good guys, came up with a different set of clues for each group, and I cast Rosa as the parrot because she never shuts up.  I told her she had to come in costume and, to my delight, she did.

Setting up for the treasure hunt was slightly stymied by the fact that the 8th graders were in PE (which is held on the soccer field) and therefore could clearly see five of the twelve total hiding places for clues.  I did what I could, then ran around like a crazy person in the 5 minutes they get to change.  When the treasure hunt began, I had a moment of panic:  what if the kids got through all of the clues in like 5 minutes?  What then?  Fortunately, everything went according to plan.  When the pirates finally found the place the treasure should have been, they stopped dead.  “Miss, there’s nothing here!”

Now, for those of you who haven’t read Treasure Island, the treasure isn’t where it’s supposed to be in the book either.  Ben Gunn, a half-crazed man marooned on the island, had already found it and hidden it elsewhere.  And I, of course, had cast one of my students as Ben, thinking it was totally obvious that there would be a twist to the game.  It was not.  While the pirates and good guys ran around looking for their clues, Cami had found the treasure, moved it to her locker, and then followed her instructions to “run around looking suspicious” brilliantly by standing in very small bushes and poking walls.

Back to the bewildered pirates.  “Miss!  Why isn’t there a treasure!?”

I raised my eyebrows.  “I don’t know.  Why might the treasure not be here?”

They were silent for three seconds, then I saw the same look of shock cross every face at the same instant.  “BEN GUNN!!”  And they took off running, Rosa’s “wings” nearly falling off in her haste.

Thirty seconds later, the good guys came hurtling out of nowhere.  “It’s over by Mrs. Hodge’s room . . . wait, did the pirates just find it!?”

“No, the treasure wasn’t there.”

“Why wasn’t the treasure— BEN GUNN!!”  For the second time in under a minute, I watched a lightbulb simultaneously light up in every face.  They sprinted off.  It was a race to find Ben/Cami, who at that point was strolling around and around a pillar.

The good guys got to her first.  “WHERE’S THE TREASURE!?”

As instructed, she asked them to bring her Ben’s coracle first.  Last week was Día del Mar (when Bolivia mourns its lost ocean), and I’d put boats of various colors on one of the big posters of the sea.  The good guys ran off — but in the wrong direction.  The pirates then found Cami, and she repeated her request.  They went the right direction, and came back with all of the boats, just to be safe.  So the pirates won the gold, which no one seemed to mind because they shared with the good guys.

The pirates and Ben/Cami.  It took an embarrassing number of tries to get a good picture . . .

. . . because José and Pau were busy doing this.