Finally this wealth of pointless informaiton has become useful

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the state of Iowa.  And being the good fan that I am, I know a lot of trivia about Iowa.  Most of it is just regular stuff like the state bird, flower, tree, etc., but some gets more obscure like John Wayne's birth name or the location of a WWII POW camp.

Generally all of this information is of little interest to other people so I am just content to keep all of it in my head and think about it to myself from time to time in order to feel like a genius.  But today, I was finally able to put all of this information to good use.

I was substitute teaching for religion and the kids had block scheduling, which means that classes last for like 8 hours or something.  At least that's what it feels like.  And all the kids had to do was take notes over like 6 pages of reading and answer a question about what they'd do if they found a wallet (some claimed they'd keep the money, I told them they wouldn't.  These kids kill me sometimes.)

Every class finished super early and had minimum of 20 minutes left with absolutely nothing to do.  So I could either fight them while they talked, try to convince them to do other homework, or keep them entertained.  I chose the last option.

I gave the kids the choice of either revealing their professional goals and hobbies from a survey they filled out the week before or of Iowa trivia.  No one chose the survey sharing.  And so I split the kids into two teams and had at it.

Let me tell you, kids LOVE Iowa trivia.  They feel immense joy when they get one right, they secretly love finding out new information, and some kids just thrive off the competition.  I was a little surprised at how many knew the location of the haunted house (maybe they're reading my blog, let's hope not!) and equally surprised at how few knew the state motto (Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain, obvis).  But my favorite part of the whole thing was seeing how shocked they were to learn some of the most awesome things about our state.  Such as, it's the home of the most crooked street in the world (Burlington) or the world's shortest and steepest railroad (Dubuque).  I love that I was able to trick the kids into learning something and that they never saw it coming.  I might just be an evil genius.