For the first time, students reading “The Odyssey” in English teacher Mark Hayes’ and English and AP Language and Composition teacher Anne Ehlers’ classes participated in the Odyssey Olympics, a game dreamed up by this creative team to help learn the epic novel and material.

The students were grouped into teams with action cards and questions cards. Each team member would get an action card telling them to do an assortment of activities such as ‘spin around 3 times and stagger’ or ‘crawl’ to get them to the board where they would pick up a question card with a question about “The Odyssey” and answer the question on a sheet of paper on the board. The questions were a variety of multiple choices and free response answers. The objective of the game was to get the most questions answered and correct.

The questions asked various things including the names of different characters, a plot outline of a certain segment of the book and how long certain people were in various places. This was a take-no-prisoners sort of game.

The competitive edge of all the teams led thing to get semi-rowdy. As the noise level rose, so did the expectation to win. The students participated in the action as fast as possible even tripping over themselves and their team mates. These actions provided as entertainment for everyone, including Ehlers and the student’s peers.

Out of the three teams of Ehlers’ seventh period Honors English 10 class, the Yellow Team reigned victorious. With graceful skill and a vast amount of knowledge, they answered the most questions correct in the short amount of time given to answer challenging and detailed questions.

This game challenged the students not only educationally but also physically. Hayes said, “With my impeccable physique and gracious footwork, I only felt it necessary to push my students to partake in Olympics that could someday encourage them to look like me.”