THE LONGEST BLOG SO FAR, THE SLAVE GAME KIDNAPPING When teaching the Civil War I devised a simple question and answer competition with a twist. By lots, I divided the student into slaves and owners. Actually they worked as a team with the owner being in charge and the one who gave the official answers to questions. I made “slave money” of my own design and ran it off on an old steno machine. It was very detailed and haphazard in order to keep my student from counterfeiting. I dealt out an even amount of money for each team. Each team could wager as much as they wished on any question. There ways provided for the slave to become free and for owners benefit either by trying to deny the freedom of their slaves or for cooperating in their freedom. Those were situational issues. The number of questions answered, multiplied by the size of the wagers, determined the amount of dollars the the teams had and this was part of what determined their grade. Since these were honors and advanced student this often caused much stress. Considering that there were no limits on the wagers, the money amounts could become extensive and for that I had blank checks that I could sign. All kind of strategies came up spontaneously about thing I never considered, such as, “may I lease a slave to another group.” This happened when a slave was very well versed or wise. “May I trade slaves with another owner.” “May I sell a slave to another owner.” “May I refuse to cooperate if my owner is not treating me correctly.” I tried to make my answers as true to the actual slave customs of the pre-Civil War Southern society as I could. All these had to be dealt with within the game and each year, the game became more refined because of them. These were very sharp teens and thus, each year the game became much more complex and sophisticated and, for the most part, better. I tried to remain flexible as much as I could and I tried to keep the game as realistic as possible. The questions for the game were created by me. The first year I spend many, many hours finding and writing these questions, I estimate about 2000 of them. Some were easy, some were difficult and many were actually taken from our textbook and and other classroom supplemental material. Many were taken from the many specific books within my own library, thus some questions were very esoteric and some were quite general. When a question was missed I put it back into the stack and asked the same question at a different time or date. I always shuffled the 3X5 index card in which he questions were written. Occasionally we would have a bid on a question. As the game progressed I witnessed some sophisticate organizing I have ever seen student create. Some organized by subject, others by date, etc. With the internet and Google, this game would not work with the extensive ability to gather specific info, this game would no longer work under this format. Because these questions were so incredibly valuable to the students, I had to take great precautions that the answers did not get out. Would AP students's cheat. You must be kidding. They would cheat more than any other groups I taught. I believe that there is often so much pressure for grades from the level of student that many, not all, of them would take every edge they could get, even out and out cheating and with some of amazing strategy that have witnessed from teens. Even their cheating was impressive. And that statement leads me into one of the most incredible classroom situation I have ever participated in or I ever heard of. If you have not read my post about the “Stick,” you may want to read it now, because is about to become the focus object of an amazing story. Basically the stick was a custom altered window closer that I carried everywhere and held it while I was teaching. One year, during the Slave Game, I was delivered a note from the office during my planning period. It read something like, “Mr. McAdams, your stick has been kidnapped and if you ever want to see it alive again, please follow these instruction precisely and completely. I day later I was delivered a note to go to the Library and on shelf such and such pull the book that is fourth from the left and look on page so and so and find more instructions. This part I really like, the name of the book was Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.. How about that, sports fans? Things progressed quickly from there. I was subsequently instructed to bring, lets say, $12,000,000 in slave money and to place it in a particular locker in the locker well on the third floor and immediately walk away. I exactly followed the instructions with a couple of secret maneuvers that set the culprits up for detection and doom. I made more money with my initial template except for a couple of additional readable but ultimately subtle marks that one had to look for to find. I also arranged for the audio visual department to secretly tape the whole procedure from a class room across the hall with the classroom lights out and the shades drawn so they would not be detected. With that information secured the next day and with my stick being returned early that day. no worse for wear, I asked all the teams to let us count their money in order to see if I needed to make change of what money I had available and then confiscated the money of the team that had perpetrated the kidnapping “put them under arrest and announced that we would have a slave trial to determine guilt or innocence.” they did have the marked money and I had the taping in hand and proceeded to assign Lawyers, jurors, a bailiff, court recorder, and a judge (me) and the trial began. I managed to get a riser from the drama department and had my desk raised to a higher level from the floor. And I got a robe from the choir room for me to wear as the judge. The trial was not going well for the defendants and they were getting desperate considering their grade was on the line. I might note that no one was going to fail this game with the worse team receiving a “C.” they tried a plea bargain but the opposing attorney wisely turned them down because he/she had a strong case. They tried begging. Didn't work. They tried throwing themselves on the mercy of the court. There was none. a day or so into the trial a man showed up at my door with what looked like a big suitcase and shook my hand and said he was an operator for the company that conducted polygraph tests for the Louisville Police Department and when he saw my blank expression he said that is was his understanding that I had requested a demonstration; I had not. As it turned out, one of the defendants father worked with the police and she had arranged this to happen. She stood and proposed that I be put on the lie detector machine and be interrogated by her. What she planned to ask I do not know, but the guest assured her that they never put teachers on the machine but they would students. The student who had arranged this, Aileen, was thus given a lie detector test after the opposing lawyer gave the operator a list of questions he wanted asked. Aileen failed miserably. They were convicted and none of their money was returned. In fairness I extended the game a couple of days and they were able to borrow money from the bank less interest and was able to come back quite a bit ( it helped that they were very organized and sharp) and their grades were not disastrous. I feel that this event was unprecedented, even unique in the annuls of education. It was cleverly done and an amazing amount of fun was had by almost everyone. I can't believe how blessed I was in my career.