By Alana Bojar
Pro Procrastinator
As the school year starts up again, many teachers playfully force their students to participate in numerous icebreakers, activities that the class could not possibly run without. This year, however, many students have noted a lack of icebreakers and are visibly upset.
We caught up with a few that were seen carrying Icebreakers, the brand of mints, around in their pockets and taped to their foreheads in protest.
“I love finding out what people did over the summer during the first weeks of school even though I always see their summer Facebook albums beforehand,” a freshman who collects funny rocks* said. “The icebreaker usually reinforces the idea that everyone did something more fun than I. Now I don’t have that same sense of regret I’ve experienced for the last 10 years of my life. It feels like something is missing.”
A senior who has 17 ferrets* had a different reason for gluing 27 individual Icebreakers onto her face.
“Even though I’ve been in classes with the same students for 13 years and we all have name cards on our desks,” she said, “I just can’t fathom the idea of moving on with the class without knowing everyone’s favorite ice cream flavor. Chocolate or vanilla? I’ll never know. The mystery haunts me every day.”
Several students were appalled that their first day of school homework was not to write down unique facts about themselves but rather to complete actual material pertaining to class– or even worse, to “enjoy the afternoon”.
Even a few teachers admitted their own anger and disappointment regarding the lack of icebreakers in their own classrooms.
“I usually do five days of ‘human bingo’, ‘where the wind blows’, yada yada, but this year I cut it down to four days,” a teacher who once fell down three flights of stairs at one time* said. “Now I feel like I don’t know my students at all. What if they tell me that their dog ate their homework? If we had played ‘two truths and a lie,’ I would know if they had a dog or not. I’ve set myself up for failure.”
Another teacher, Idon Cair, disagreed.
“Even after weeks of icebreakers, I’ve forgotten everything about my students,” he said. “I just call them by their defining clothing items. Some students might walk in after lunch and I’ll say hello to Birkenstock Girl One, Birkenstock Girl Two, and Jean Shorts Girls One, Two, Three, and Four. It’s as simple as that.”
The senior who has 17 ferrets suggests that anyone who would like to join in with the protest can stop by the fourth floor of the 6000s to pick up some superglue and Icebreakers free of charge.
*Students and faculty wanted their names to be changed to an interesting fact about them in protest.
