Occasionally, students may wonder whether or not they are smarter than their teachers.

Battle of the Brains gave scholars bowl members the opportunity to compete against their teachers in a few rounds of Scholars Bowl format competition.

“This is the second year I have done this at HHS,” math teacher Lisa Colwell said. “When I taught at Victoria High School we used to have an annual challenge of students vs. teachers and I participated in that challenge several times.”

Colwell said it was “stressful” to go against the students.

“We lost one battle last year and didn’t want to do that again this year,” Colwell said.

Colwell also said it was fun to compete.

“I can’t believe how hard the questions are,” Colwell said. “Scholars Bowl students have to really know their subject areas to compete well.”

Math teacher Dustin Dreher also said it was his second year of competition.

“I think it is a great time,” Dreher said. “I truly enjoy seeing kids that have a thirst for knowledge. That thirst is what we need in our leaders of tomorrow. Never stop learning.”

He also wished the varsity and JV scholars bowl teams the best of luck in future events.

English teacher Melanie Folkerts also had two years of competition under her belt, but she had some additional experience, too.

“I have lots of practice being the mom in the audience watching my kids do the Quiz Bowl or Scholars Bowl events,” Folkerts said.

Folkerts said she enjoyed the Battle of the Brains experience.

“After all, we are in education for the students,” Folkerts said. “Last year the scores were much closer.  In fact, the students won. This year seemed to go the other way. I think we teachers realized we couldn’t sit back and be sure we had the answer, so we rung in more quickly this year.”

Despite this year’s loss, sophomore Scholars Bowl member Gage Phillips said he enjoyed the competition.

“I thought it was a neat opportunity to try and school the teachers,” Phillips said. “We may have lost, but it was still a cool experience to be reassured that the teachers are in fact infinitely smarter than we can give them credit for. I would gladly do it again next year”.

Freshman member Hannah Norris had a similar perspective.

“This was my first time participating, and it was really crazy,” Norris said. “The teachers are really good at this. It was really fun, and I can’t wait to do it again.”

14nfeyerherm@usd489.com