The challenge for Central Academy Middle School’s seventh grade teachers was to come up with a challenge for their students in an integrated unit that would combine history, math, science, English and the arts (music in this instance).

Last Thursday, the 140 or so seventh graders found themselves in a race, so to speak, to save the world by finding the combinations that would allow them to unlock the vial that would stop a Smallpox epidemic.

The “escape room”  challenge that was built over the course of the spring by the teachers using National Treasures-type clues the students had to follow and solve in sequence.

Those clues came in various forms from the different class disciplines. Many were related to the novel all the students had to read this year about Smallpox— “Code Orange.”

It seemed a daunting task: 36 teams of six students each (six teams at a time) entered the school gymnasium where they went to an “escape room” table for the clues. The clues and answers at each of the six tables were different, so different teams solved different clues.

Oh, and they had just 30 minutes to save the world, and team  members were randomly assigned.

The teachers were not kind, either.  There were “red herrings” to lead teams astray.

“There’s nothing here that’s easy,” math teacher Jane Wolfe explained.  “It’s all about collaboration and critical thinking.”

Collaboration and critical thinking are among the “C-Skills” that have become an integral part of the school division’s interest in teaching the “soft skills” that colleges and employers have discovered are perhaps as important as what students learn in order to pass the SOLs.

The teachers spent quite a bit of time collaborating and critically thinking themselves while putting together the challenges.

Math problems without using a calculator. Lessons from history. Using a microscope. Understanding geography. Reading music. Knowing how to use reference material and understanding specific words.

Those required students to work together, Wolfe explained. “It’s all about trusting people in your group and getting out of your comfort zone.”

The challenge itself evolved from the idea about Smallpox. Each team was presented with the same one:

“Smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases to Plague the human population, was declared eradicated in 1980 following a global immuniZation Effort led by the World Health OrganiZation.  To be Used for research, a few vials of the disease have been housed in a secure location at the Center for Disease ControL and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.  You are scientists using the disease for research.  One day, you noticed that a vial of smallpox is missing; it is your job to find the missing vial before it gets into the wrong hands.”

The teachers tested the challenge themselves, and Wolfe said all but one team solved the clues in the 30-minutes allowed.

Each “escape room” challenge started with a math problem. In Wolfe’s challenge, students put together a farm puzzle that has a math problem on the back. After the puzzle was together, students flipped the puzzle over for the problem.

Solving that problem allowed the team to get the song and the code word that would allow them to open a box with a clue about smallpox with a quote from “Code Orange.”  They then had to get a synonym for a word in the quote, which allowed them to go to the microscope, find a latitude and longitude on a global atlas, and that would give them combination to the final lock to get the vial.

Those red herrings, though, came into play, such as different reference books to use, a globe and an atlas to chose from for the map coordinates, etc.

In the end eight teams saved the world within the 30 minutes, including the winning team of Kaylee Johnson, Gavin Jernigan, Eli Johnson, Nicholas Jamison amd Michael Jorgensen.

The escape room program was so well received, the teachers will do a presentation on it at a middle school conference this fall.