chaotic mortal

A Competition for TAKS

April 30th, 2008. Published under School, True Life. 2 Comments.

My teacher has a tendency to get pumped up with everything. She happens also to be one of the best teachers I have ever had. Take her “educational experiments”, for example.

At the beginning of the year, we played dice. Then it was wall ball, which was hitting a ball to a bunch of numbers taped to the wall. Then it was golf, knocking a ball to a spot on a big paper.

Then the next half of the year began. We played Bop-It, Groove-It, Guitar Zoom, and much more. It certainly was a fun year.

Now the TAKS, the biggest test of the school year, was coming up. And she was talking with another fifth grade teacher at another school. And they decided to have a little competition to see which class was better.

The bet was that if you lost, you would have to wear the other school’s mascot.  “You’re on,” my teacher said. And so it began.

My teacher began pumping it up.

“If everything could be represented in candy, this is what you would be on TAKS test day.”

She held up a bag of Nerds. We laughed.

She held up a bag of Smarties. We laughed harder.

She held up a bag of Little Einstein treats. We were howling.

“And this,” she shouted over the laughing,” is what they are.” Pausing, she added quietly, “This is just a joke…”

Grinning, she held up a bag of Air-Heads. We laughed.

“So we’re going to win!” she whispered to us loudly.

After a day or so, the other teacher told our teacher there would be a “special delivery”. Our teacher checked the front of our school for a little bit, but then realized it wasn’t going to be sent by post.

The other teacher had sent us a few things via her husband. They were posters: “We’re going to win!” and “Get used to wearing our mascot.”

The other teacher’s husband was really tall. He had brought his own stapler, and reaching up, stapled it on the wall where our teacher couldn’t reach. He grinned, and walked away.

“Really, now,” our teacher grumbled playfully as she grabbed a chair and took them down.

As it happened, my classmate Henry was going on a campout with Boy Scouts that weekend. They were going to have a big campfire…

“Burn them!” A classmate said. Then she immediately sat back, as if she was in trouble for blurting out. The teacher, however, did not mind.

“BRILLIANT!” she said, and clapped. “You take the posters and burn them in your campfire. Bring back the pieces and the ashes.”

We all grinned.

And he did. The next week, he came back with a plastic bag of ashes and a big piece of the poster to prove it really had been burned. His mom took it to the school that morning.

Our teacher sent quizzes that everyone made up, and vice versa. Most of the questions made sense and weren’t all making fun of the other team, but some of them were.

For example, they usually had something to do with the mascots of the teams. If they had a lion for a mascot, we would put a picture of a electrocuted kitty cat and ask them the perimeter.

It was hilarious. Finally, the TAKS test had to be taken. With a big wink from our teacher, we began taking the test.