An Academic Competition

I generally approach each ostensibly enjoyable field trip, guest speaker, or special event with a combination of cautious optimism and abject terror, having been humiliated too many times in these circumstances to embrace them as opportunities for entertainment. Last year's visit from an elderly representative of Monticello, who was supposed to deliver an hour-long presentation but left in tears after five minutes to jeers of "Get out of here, white woman!" comes to mind immediately. Our field trip to Jamestown this past fall, when Velquisha stole a checkerboard from inside one of the replica ships and Montee got in a fight with a kid from another school, will be an equally difficult memory to erase. I'd been looking forward to Friday's Mind Games competition, however, with unrestrained enthusiasm in the ten weeks since volunteering to coach my school's team.

Mind Games, you see, is an annual district-wide event where schools send their best and brightest to compete in a series of academic challenges. My school's team was culled from our program for gifted students, and the six fourth and fifth graders for which I was responsible were not only smart but motivated, respectful, and - most importantly - malleable. Given that I spend roughly seven hours a day working with kids who seemingly make it a point to test my patience on a daily basis, the opportunity to coach students actually willing to listen to me and follow my instructions was irresistible. From our first after-school practice, I made it my mission to not only organize a competitive team but also instill in my young charges a unique brand of showmanship, which we unveiled and executed in flawless fashion at the competition.

We arrived at the competition about 45 minutes before the scheduled start time of 10:00, each wearing our 2009 Mind Games shirts we'd designed for the occasion. We had arrived early by design, as in order to carry out our first bit of flair we needed to be the first team there. After greeting the Mind Games staffers and having our team photo taken, we strode to our assigned table and enjoyed a brunch of juice boxes and donuts. All talking stopped, however, when the first group of our competitors arrived. As rehearsed, my kids leaned back in their chairs, crossed their arms, jutted out their chins, looked appraisingly at the newcomers, and did their best to project an aura of confident authority.* They maintained their poses until the last team came through the door some fifteen minutes later. I'm still not sure whether their stares did anything to intimidate the other teams - who had become accustomed to trouncing my school in recent Mind Games competitions, and whose primary response had been to point at us and snicker - but in those fifteen minutes they demonstrated unflinching solidarity, and I couldn't have been prouder.

Because each coach had to monitor another school's team during the competition, I was unable to watch the team complete their challenges, but kept tabs from across the gymnasium floor via a series of thumbs-ups and thumbs-downs with Aisha between each event. I did have a clear view of the kids, however, as the head judge read off the answers to the analogies and general knowledge questions after those rounds had ended, and was thrilled to see us adhere to one of my strictest and most-repeated stipulations for our conduct that morning; namely, that there should be absolutely no reaction to anything said by the judge between rounds. For example, upon hearing that the answer to Question #1 was "B - Tornado," every team but one responded with loud and excruciatingly annoying "Yessssssss!!"es, spastic fist pumps, and clumsily executed high fives. My team, by contrast, merely nodded and smiled at each other in satisfaction after learning of their correct answers.

When the competition ended and coaches were allowed to rejoin their teams, I made sure to let them know how pleased I was with how they'd performed, and that the final results shouldn't matter to us. All of that changed, however, when the judge announced that we had won fifth place, and the kids immediately lost the composure they'd carefully cultivated all morning. The school's team had never done so well at a Mind Games competition, and this exceeded even my highest hopes. After staying long enough to fulfill the last of my rules of conduct - clapping and cheering for every team the judge mentioned - we headed back to our school, ribbons in hand. 

*This was easier for some than others. Alaina, for example, had a mouth, chin, and nose absolutely caked with powdered sugar from her donut.