Shiver me timbers

The fourth-graders Lakeside Elementary School teacher Babs Tims pulled out of PE class Friday afternoon struggled to contain their excitement.

Sporting eye patches, skull rings, bandanas and adopted pirate names, the giddy young swashbucklers couldn’t wait to talk about all the cool activities Tims had devised for them for International Talk Like A Pirate Day, gushing in unison about how awesome it was to be in the only class that gets to dress like pirates. This year’s Pirate Day falls on Sunday, so Tims’ class got to spend the day dressed up, studying pirate-themed lessons.

So why does Tims’ class get to go on treasure hunts and eat treasure chest-shaped cake that’s covered with pirate’s booty?

“They’re just not into pirates like Ms. Tims is,” Jazmin Havens, a.k.a. “Shiver Me Timbers,” said of the other Lakeside teachers, much to the nodding agreement of Katie Painter, Carter Uttley, Kyra Ketcham and Aidan Harries.

“Yeah, Ms. Tims’ class is the only one that does it,” Harries, or “Swab,” said. “She loves pirates.”

That’s not intended as an indictment of the other teachers. Rather, they said, it just shows how hip Tims is.

Indeed, Tims loves her some pirates. Now in the fifth year of her classroom celebration of the romanticized sea raiders, Tims said she has tried to entice other classes to participate.

“She even writes poetry about pirates and she wrote about Pirate Day,” Ketcham, who Friday answered to “Captain Double K,” added. But, while a class or two have participated here and there in past years, the interest just hasn’t been there.

But Havens, the most outspoken of the group, said she can see the envy on the faces of her peers.

“You can tell they’re like, ‘oh, man, you get to dress like pirates?!” Havens said.

So, they’re jealous?

“Probably!” she grinned.

And it’s easy to see why. Who, really, could resist a lunch menu with the likes of skull-shaped Jolly Roger sandwiches; cannonballs (grapes); Walk the Plank ice cream sandwiches; skeleton bones (Cheetos); and treasure cake (only after the math test, of course)? Or what about the treasure hunt designed to teach them math and to follow directions, and which yielded such riches as skull rings and buccaneer bracelets?

Well, the hunt was cool, they said, but it might have had an ulterior motive.

“It took us all the way around the school and ended up back in the classroom,” Havens said. “It probably was just to get us out of the classroom so she could hide the treasure.”

To help her students prepare for International Talk Like A Pirate Day, Tims whipped up a glossary of pirate terms and phrases.

“She said it’s so we can take it home this weekend and bug our parents,” Ketcham laughed.

But, really, just a review guide. Tims utilizes pirate-themed activities throughout the year, and her kids pretty much know the lingo by heart. Talk Like A Pirate Day just lets them unleash their new-found vocabulary.

“She told us about it a week ago...” Painter, a.k.a. “Grace,” said.

“And we all got really excited!” Harries, who forgot to pick a name, cut in.

“We have to say ‘Argh’ quite a bit,” Painter continued. “It’s really fun!”

So they all know quite a bit about pirates. That’s not to say Tims’ students spend their days plundering each others’ desks and taking hostages. Mostly, she said, it’s a way to make the standard lessons fun. Take, for example, a word problem in which “Ole’ Chumbucket can blow a man down in 20 seconds. How many men can he blow down in 15 minutes?”

Some activities are more interactive. For instance, the desks are configured in clusters of six, and the “pirate crews” each elect a captain; first mate, who keeps the captain in line; quartermaster, who inventories school supplies, sea artist, who writes any group assignments; and a cabin boy, who does pretty much gets the short end of the stick.

“They have to do everything!” said Julian Archuleta, who had moseyed over. “I don’t want to be one!”

Yeah. When we’re bored, we just make the cabin boy go do stuff,” Havens giggled. “We make ours do everything!”

Dominic Stefanoni knows just what Havens was talking about. He said he initially had looked forward to being his crew’s cabin boy.

“But I’m a first mate now,” he said.

And true to pirate form, the crews can cast off their leaders if they decide they don’t like how they’re running the ship.

“We can totally mutiny and elect another captain,” Ketcham said.

So, here is a day filled with cake, ice cream, goodies, pirate poems and costumes. What could possibly make it better?

“We could have it every Friday!” Harries gushed.

What about other themes? Like Cowboy Day?

“Yeah!” in unison. “That would be awesome!”

Havens, though, waxed philosophically. They should just enjoy the fun they’re having while
they still can, she said.

“Being in fourth grade is cool because you get to do so much cool stuff, like this,” she said. “When you get to middle school you don’t get to do that, and the older kids will probably hit you on the head with stuff.”

Is there anything else they’d prefer to do?

“No!” they moaned at once, shaking their heads. “Ms. Tims is the best!”