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The Traitors of Algebra 2

When new teachers ask me for advice, one of the most important things I tell them is to find ways to incorporate their own passions and interests into their teaching. There are far too many demands on us not to do that and still have a thriving classroom. Teaching can quickly become an unsustainable enterprise when followed by the letter of the law.

The most recent example of me taking my own advice is a game I’ve started playing with my students. It’s called Traitors.

If you’ve watched the popular reality show on Peacock of the same name, the game is identical — with some modifications for the classroom setting. I fell in love with the show the moment I started watching it, and playing it with students allows me to tap into my interests. Here are the slides I used to explain the game to my students:

A few things not covered in the slides:

I am in private communication with the Traitors (via Slack), who inform me of who they want to murder
I announce murders to the class (each murder victim receives a letter from the Traitors declaring their murder)
All Banishment votes are confidential (at least for the foreseeable future, no one will know who voted for whom)
The prize pot starts off with nothing in it and gradually grow as the class completes Weekly Missions, ultimately resulting in a pizza party (I hope)

In the remaining time we have together as a class, I hope the game fosters anticipation in the hearts and minds of my students. Who will the Traitors murder next? Who has the class voted off? There will certainly be drama when the answers to these questions are resolved each week, but I’m confident that the game’s edginess will fuel student engagement. Of course, the twists and turns that I will add along the way will only heighten gameplay!

To add to the game’s theatrics, each student has a portrait of themselves hanging in the room, which will be X’d out whenever they are eliminated. This mirrors what happens in the reality show.

Students portraits, which are X’d out when they are eliminated

Other than gameplay, which is loads of sneaky fun, I appreciate several other things about Traitors. First, it’s a long-term game that runs in the background of our class. Most games that are played in my classroom span a class period or maybe two. But Traitors, as I’ve designed it, will last over two months. And despite its long lifespan, the game will not disrupt instruction all that much. Everything I would normally do will still happen. After the launch, which took about 20 minutes, the time investment for the game is small. Banishments and murders each happen once a week, and we’ll use the last five minutes of class to announce them. All the gossip and interrogation the students will do to each other will happen outside of class or in the shadows of our work together during the week.

Another aspect I really like about the game is the Weekly Missions. These are going to be a great way to have a classwide goal each week, something we can work towards. The missions will be tangible and obtainable, but not always linked to grades. For example, since a couple of my classes have had issues with tardiness, here was my first Weekly Mission, which I called “3-for-3”:

I believe the end of the school year should stimulate as much anticipation as the beginning. I chose to play Traitors in the latter months of the year because it will add a thrilling finale to a series of activities I use to bring closure to our class. When June rolls around, our Traitors endgame will be a great addition to my end-of-year class events.

Despite my giddiness for playing the game with my students, I’d be remiss to not admit my hesitancy. My students are a wonderful lot, but before starting the game, I had to be confident that my class culture could handle the lies, deception, and mind games that Traitors will undoubtedly bring to the class. It could be a lot! I had to run the game by my cogen and ask colleagues about it multiple times in order to build my confidence to actually do it. The biggest piece of advice I received: To keep the Banishment votes confidential.

Time will tell how the game pans out and if the Faithful can indeed identify the Traitors before the end. We’ll see!

The end of snow days

What a shame.

Today, New York City Public Schools closed because of inclement weather. Instead of having a day off, students and teachers were required to dust off our Zoom credentials, log in, and conduct remote learning.

This is a terrible idea.

Snow days are an essential part of what it means to be a kid. There is something invaluable that comes with waking up to discover that school is canceled. While school officials fear a loss of instructional time, children gain something just as important: unmitigated joy.

For me, snow days felt like cheating the system. By staying home, I was getting away with a crime. It was thrilling. I got to reclaim my day from the regimented schedule of school and no one could say anything about it. Snow days brought about a mental release that can only emerge from having unexpected, unstructured time.

Snow days gave me power. For one day, I didn’t have to unnaturally drag my tired body to meet up with a bunch of other tired bodies to do things we were told were important. Instead, we had snowball fights and sipped hot chocolate. We watched movies and played video games. We ate cereal multiple times a day. Snow days offered us the type of autonomy we rarely experienced, except for maybe on our birthday. We were on top of the world.

That type of joy is good for the soul. Kids need it. I know I did. Taking it away and replacing it with artificial learning — like that which happens on Zoom — is futile. It’s a decision that disrespects childhood. Besides, have we not learned anything from the disaster that was the 2020-21 school year? Zoom learning was a joke then, and still is. Replacing one day of unfiltered joy with a Zoom link is a brazen attempt to hold on when the right decision is to simply let go. Days like today are misguided attempts to hurry children into adulthood, where work never stops for a snowstorm. Let our kids be kids. Give them the day off and all the merriness that it brings.

Thanks to the pandemic, I know snow days will never be the same again. We’ve officially turned a corner. This is deeply concerning given all that students are losing in the process.

I’ll be there for my students today on Zoom, but so will my contempt for this day. Part of me was going to tell my kids to forget about Zoom and to go have a true snow day. Legally, I can’t do that, but boy I wanted to.

Dear N, (Student Letter #11)

To help me be more critical and mindful of the bonds I’m forging in and out of the classroom, I write anonymous letters to some of my current and former students. This is the 11th post in the series.

Dear N,

It was wonderful seeing you last week. What a pleasant surprise! I was walking out of my classroom to get lunch and there you were with one of our guidance counselors in the hallway. You were visiting to get some paperwork in order.

I never know what I’m going to feel when I see former students. There’s happiness and excitement, of course, when I see how much they’ve grown and changed in the years since teaching them. Sometimes, when I forget their names, I feel guilt and embarrassment and hope I’m not put on the spot or slip up. But no matter who it is, there’s almost always nostalgia as I think back to my time teaching them.

For the record: Hardly any of these feelings are given time to breathe in our brief conversations, which usually happen when these students come back to visit. Afterward, I’m left putting my feelings together like a jigsaw puzzle when its pieces are dumped out of the box.

With you, what I felt was tied to a particular set of interactions we had.

It was the 2020-21 school year, also known as the school year from hell. You were in my advisory. We met once a week, every Friday, for an hour. Like everything else, it was on Zoom. The “Advisory Committee” at my school created slides to guide our discussions, but I rarely followed them. The materials were too ambitious and impersonal and disregarded the fact that we were remote. As a result, we did our own thing.

One of the things we did came from you. Specifically, your writing. After I learned of your passion for storytelling, I invited you to share some of your writing with our advisory. Without hesitation, you consented.

What followed was several months of reading and reflecting on one of your original stories. Each week, you wrote a new chapter. A third of our time together was spent reading and discussing it instead of doing whatever was on the slides. We took turns unmuting ourselves to read and ask you questions about the characters, plot, and setting. We debated and cursed characters for their decision-making. It was a wildly unique experience.

There weren’t many good things that happened in my classes during the 2020-21 school year. But your story was one of them. It was a candlelight in a dark room. We were all so isolated that year, so disconnected, but for those 20 minutes we were immersed in your writing, we weren’t. We were as one. What’s more is that, on a good day, there were just 5 of us in class on any given Friday. The depth and clarity of your story, however, made it feel larger and more full.

Thus, your storytelling pulled off an amazing feat: It not only brought us together, but multiplied us. It was a solace for remote learning, a balm for my scarred pedagogy. Looking forward to the next chapter each week and subsequently getting lost in it fostered community at a time when community was nowhere to be found.

I realized all this the moment I saw you in the hallway last week. It’s a shame that I didn’t have the words then. This letter will have to suffice. I hope you understand how grateful I am for you.

You told me you were in college and that you’re still doing what you love, writing. I couldn’t help but notice how you lit up when you told me this. It’s fulfilling to know that the many smiles your writing created for us on Zoom are now finding their way back to you.

Be well,
Mr. Palacios

“The students must drive you crazy”

Dear Person I Met in the Elevator,

“Wow. Bless you. The students must drive you crazy.”

That’s a direct quote from you. The remark — filled with aghast — came immediately after I explained that I was a high school teacher. Judging by your reaction, I think you confused teaching with swimming with sharks. You weren’t in disbelief as much as you were concerned for my well-being.

What struck me about the comment, and why I bring it up here, isn’t because your reaction was in any way unique or special. It’s the opposite: Practically everyone I meet reacts the same way you did. Your reply was memorable only because it was so predictable.

It’s an absolute shame that people observe a subway-surfing teen or a few knuckleheads at the mall and pass judgment on every teenager alive. Thinking that this extremely small subgroup of teens is in any way representative of the students in my (or any) classroom is both shallow and hurtful. No offense.

You have to excuse my strong recoil from our brief interaction that day. At the moment, I said none of this. I didn’t fully understand what I was feeling, although I knew you triggered something within me. Maybe it’s because I’m approaching the last third of my teaching career, and I feel the need to defend all my time spent in the classroom, but I find comments like yours increasingly bothersome. They disrespect my students, none of whom you have ever met.

As someone who works hard to support and serve young people, I am hurt to have my kids so pointedly dismissed as problematic. My students are wonderful. Let me repeat: my students are wonderful. Of course, they have their moments. I’ll get the occasional cheater or copier. And some, for the life of me, can’t arrive on time for first period.

But they are still well-mannered, trustworthy, and insanely smart. They deserve better. If you visited my classroom I’m confident you would feel the same.

So please don’t be concerned about my well-being. I’m doing just fine. My students ensure this.

Sincerely,
Brian, your fellow elevator rider