On Thursday, I was invited by some students to join them for “wing night” at Eddy’s Deli. Eddy’s offers all-you-can-eat wings, with soup and side and a small dessert for $10. I am impressed that students want to hang out with teachers, so I try to go whenever I am invited (plus, I like the food).

On this night, there was a huge group (for us). Besides me, there were Matt Fleagle and Craig McSparran for the teachers, and we had eight students show up. We ate too much and spent most of the two-plus hours talking about superheroes, and so it was a great time. The only downside was that the service was very slow – the restaurant was shorthanded, and I think they put a group of eleven people near the bottom of the priority list, so they could focus on the tables of four and two people. I ended up leaving before dessert was served because I had told Mer I would come back to school at 6:30 to get her, and I left the restaurant at 7:15. Still, as a group, we laughed a lot, and so it was a good evening.

I felt bad that Mer had to wait until 7:30 before I came to get her, so I took her to Arby’s to get some food. We walked in and were greeted by two of our students – David and Steven (Steven graduated last year). They come to a Pokemon card night at Arby’s every Thursday, and so we got to chat with them for awhile. That was a happy event, and Mer was able to get her food. We came home, and she ate while we watched an episode of Doctor Who.

Last Saturday was kind of Mer’s day, but it was largely taken up by a school-related event. Last spring, Mer volunteered to start up a junior high team for Academic Challenge. Academic Challenge is sort of like trivia and Jeopardy!, played by students. CVCA has had an Academic Challenge program for high school since Mer was at CVCA (she was in fact the captain of her team), but CVCA has never had a junior high team before.

So, Mer founded a team with the goal of helping to build the high school team, and also getting involved with students. She loves trivia and knowledge, so it is a good fit. Mer took the team to two meets in the fall semester, and then took a couple months off. The team started practicing in February for the state meet, which was held last Saturday at John Carroll University in Cleveland. So, that is where we were for much of the day.

John Carroll is a small but pretty campus. They took good care of us, including opening up their excellent cafeteria for our lunch (the school seemed to be on break, as there were no students about). We had some trouble finding parking or even a car-accessible entrance to the campus; the school seems very protective of the grounds. We parked on the street and made our way to the building where the competition was to take place.

This was a pretty big meet, with junior high and high school teams. Many schools sent a junior high, a junior varsity, and a varsity team. CVCA sent two junior high teams – a seventh grade and an eighth grade team. In all, there were sixteen junior high teams competing.

For the actual competition, two teams would square off, with four players playing at once. Each round was made up of four parts, and substitutions could be made between each part. Mer made sure everyone on each of our two teams got to play at least once per round, although her best players stayed in through all four parts of each round.

Our teams did well. The seventh grade team went 3-3 through the six rounds, and our eighth grade team went 4-2, losing two very close games (one round was decided on the last question). All teams that went 4-2 or better qualified for the finals, so nine of the sixteen teams moved on.

I got roped into being a question reader since several readers did not show up. I liked reading – I found the questions interesting, and I had several coaches tell me I was the best and clearest reader their teams had had during the day. That was satisfying. Mer joined me to help me for the last two regular rounds after lunch, and for one round of the playoffs. As such, I did not get to see CVCA compete except for the very first round, when they happened to be in the room in which I was helping.

CVCA’s eighth grade team won their first-round game in the playoffs, and then the tournament runners had enough help, so we got to see our kids square off against Port Clinton, last year’s state champs. It was a competitive game, but we got out to an early lead by getting a lucky category draw of “The Bible.”  Our students did very well in that category, and maintained a lead for the rest of the game, and so advanced on to the final round.As one of the top four teams of the tournament, the team qualified to go to the national competition in Chicago in June. That was unexpected, so it looks as if Mer’s season will go on.

In the final round, we faced off against Hawken, an excellent (and pricey) private school that sent three junior high teams to compete. Our team was facing a Hawken team to whom they had lost in the first round of the day. The game was very competitive, but Mer’s team managed to win by one question. We have since heard that there was a dispute that someone in the audience said an answer that our team got right, so they gave Hawken a co-championship; nonetheless, CVCA’s eighth grade team won the state tournament in the team’s first full year of existence. I was very proud of Mer and her students!

Playing nine rounds of games, plus lunch, plus travel time took a fair amount of time. As such, we did not get home until early evening, and we were both pretty tired. So, we pretty much stayed home, but it was an interesting day.

Mer has been trying to arrange get-togethers with various colleagues in the form of going out to dinner or dessert on Fridays. Last Friday, Mer got in touch with our friends the Gurnishes. They were game to have supper, but already had plans to go to a Lenten fish fry at the Greek Cultural Center in Akron. Nate and Rachel are not Greek, but they do like a good fish fry. They said there would be other people there, but invited us along.

So, last Friday, we made our way to the Greek Cultural Center near the campus of the University of Akron. Mer and I arrived there first, but Nate’s mom showed up shortly after we did and recognized us. I went to find a bathroom, and after being directed to one by a man right out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I came back to find that Nate and Rachel and a couple of more people had come in and claimed a table for nine (and two small children). We headed to the food line, where everyone but me got all-you-can-eat fish. I got chicken. We took our food to the table, and Mer and I were introduced to Nate and Rachel’s friends. They were two very funny young couples, one of whom Mer knew of distantly – the husband is the son of Don Bechtel, one of our colleagues. Both couples (and Nate and Rachel) had small children, but the children were very well behaved.

We had a very fun evening of visiting with everyone. I was especially glad to catch up with Nate and Rachel, since I have not had much of a chance to do that this year. Nate went to part-time, so he teaches and then leaves; I don’t get to see him much, and we have only run together maybe twice all school year.

The food was quite good, although the chicken was not all-you-can-eat. As such, once we left, I swung by Handel’s to get a sundae. That was also quite good and hit the spot.

CVCA has student-adult groups it calls “Connections.” The idea is to match up a group of eight to twelve students with an adult so that all students have a faculty or staff member to whom they can talk. I have a Connections group of eight senior guys, and they are a pretty fantastic group of students to be around. I like to arrange off-campus events once in awhile, so last week I proposed we go out to eat. The group suggested the nearby Royal Buffet, a Chinese buffet restaurant, and that sounded like a great idea. Since people can show up staggered, buffets and other casual eateries are best for these sorts of get-togethers.

Last Monday was the day set for the food fest, and we had a pretty good time. It was me and three of my eight guys, but that was enough people to feel like a real outing, and still small enough that we could all still talk (when we were not eating). One of the guys, Nate, had never been to the Royal Buffet before, and he gave it a huge thumbs-up. We were only there for about an hour, but I had a good time and the other guys seemed happy too. There was certainly plenty of good food to go around.

Last Saturday was a busy CVCA-filled day. A few months ago, one of Mer’s students, who had transferred from another school, asked Mer if she had ever heard of the Shakespeare Competition. Mer had not, and so the student filled Mer in on some details, and Mer looked into it. The competition is national, but starts at local schools. Your school must have at least three competitors, and they all prepare a Shakespearean monologue of about twenty lines. The school contest, in our case, was judged by two school judges (Brandon and Dubbs), and a judge the regional competition people sent. So, CVCA had its first Shakespeare Competition about a month ago. Mer had about ten students participate, and it went very well. A girl, Talia, won for our school with a monologue out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the fairy Titania falls in love with a common man who magically has the head of a donkey. Talia did a very nice job, but I felt that any of the top three or four would have done well at a regional competition. It went well.

Saturday was the regional competition up in Cleveland, at Playhouse Square, in the PBS studios called Idea Center. We met Talia and her father and two of Talia’s friends at Idea Center. The hosts fed us well, providing both breakfast (donuts) and lunch (excellent sandwiches). There were thirty schools slated to compete, but I feel as though one did not make it.

After opening remarks, the students were divided into two groups – even numbers and odd numbers (they had been assigned numbers when they arrived). Talia was an even, so we stayed with the even group. Talia went in the second half (she was number twenty-two, so she went eleventh out of fourteen). The students presented their monologue and also had to recite (from memory) a sonnet. The field of competitors was impressive. The vast majority of monologues were good, and about a half dozen were excellent. The judges voted on three winners from each of the two rooms to compete head to head after lunch, where they would do the monologue, a sonnet, and a new monologue that they had thirty minutes to practice.

The competition in our room was fierce. Talia recited her lines well, but her presentation did not involve much movement, and I think that hurt her. All three of the winners in our room (as well as a few excellent ones that did not make the cut) used most or all of the stage, moving around freely and using many gestures (without overacting). I was content with the three winners in our room; they were all deserving, although I had picked two others to win.

The winners for the finals were announced, and then we broke for lunch while the six winners went off to practice their new scenes. We all came back to the main studio/theater for the finals after lunch, and the six finalists all went. Oddly, and I think this happened by coincidence, the three winners from the other room went first, and then our three winners went. Everyone did a fine job, but I thought it was no contest; I felt, and Mer and Talia’s father agreed, that our room was quite a bit superior, and that they would finish first, second, and third. We had nothing invested at this point since Talia was out of the running; we were three theater-savvy people who thought the three girls from the “even” room had done a much better job overall. The other three competitors did a fine job, but lacked movement overall and some polish in the new, limited-time scene.

The winner of the regional contest gets a paid trip to the nationals in New York. Second place is the alternate if first place cannot go to the nationals for some reason. We were rather pleased with the winner – a girl from our room who had done the “Is this a dagger?” speech from Macbeth. She was very strong, although I would have been happy with any of the “even” girls. Imagine our surprise when the other two girls from “our” room came in third and honorable mention. The judges had voted for a young man who had done a good rendition of Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet, but Mer and I (and Mer’s students later, when she asked them) all felt that the two other girls had been more expressive and more expansive with the text. The only thing we could come up with was that maybe the judges split over the other girls and the young man rose to second based on lack of objection. It at least gave us something to talk about on the drive home.

We got home in the mid-afternoon and puttered around home. We had supper, and then headed over to CVCA to see our friends’ band, Bethesda, who were playing at CVCA along with three other opening groups (two student groups and a solo faculty act). Bethesda is trying to record a new album, so the concert was a fundraiser to help them do that. Since we were leisurely over supper, Mer and I missed the opening two student-group acts, and only caught half of the faculty member’s act. He did a nice job, although he did have the misfortune to break a string on one of his two guitars; happily, he had a fully acoustic one on which to fall back.

Mer and I got to hang out with Dubbs and a couple of other teachers, and after the concert we ran into Zach and Londa, so it was a very social evening. Bethesda did a great job, and played two new (to us) songs. They even invited students on stage for the last song to dance, and that was fun to see that kind of energy and enthusiasm. I’m sad I did not have my camera to take any pictures.

Bethesda and the Bard made for a busy little day, but I enjoyed myself.