"It gets way competitive:" Northglenn High School teacher incorporates "Survivor" into curriculum
On Wednesday night, fans can tune into CBS News Colorado to find out who will be this season's lone "Survivor" in its finale. Fans are waiting anxiously to see who will take it all, including one local enthusiast. Northglenn High School teacher, Joe Croteau, integrates the show into his teaching curriculum. He's been doing it for the past two decades.
"In 2000, I started teaching, and that's the same year that 'Survivor,' the actual TV show, came out. I started to incorporate that in my classroom," Croteau said. "Kids quickly jumped on to the idea, so I started doing more and more of the classes."
Fast forward to the present day. A typical class for Croteau includes everything from suspenseful tribal music and votes to cast out their peers. CBS News Colorado's Mekialaya White wanted to check one out and Croteau detailed how it works.
"You break the kids into teams, their tribes," he said. "They come up with team names based on American history, and then they compete in challenges based on the academics for the day – whether it's a reading or doing some review for a test – then they get points for being in the challenge. At the end of the challenge, if their team comes in first place they get immunity. The other teams vote someone out of their tribe and they become a castaway, just like in the actual TV show. Then, after they get voted out, those castaways are thinking, am I voted out? Is it over? But it's not over because the castaways have a chance to get back on to survivor by competing in challenges over the semester."
"Does it get pretty competitive?" White asked.
Croteau laughed. "It gets way competitive."
He says he started the class to boost communication between the students, which proved effective.
"My goal always is how can I get them to care about my class, learn the curriculum and engage with one another. In my class, everyone will know each other. They're constantly on different teams, trying to help each other."
Croteau says the best part, without a doubt, is the plot twists.
"I don't know what the students are going to do in my class – they are constantly trying to come up with ways to win the game and out of nowhere you'll have a student who gets blindsided and those are my favorite things. They are just flabbergasted it's the little twists that happen."
