Nerves remained high backstage, the teachers, unaware of what Miami Palmetto Senior High’s Television Production team had in store for them, the lights went up and it was trivia time. Students and teachers alike piled into the auditorium, excited for the teacher showdown: MPSH’s first annual Teacher Trivia.

On Thursday, April 27, TVP held its first teacher trivia, hosted by Athletic Director Steve Batten. Tickets sold for $10 and students came to support their class.

“We’ve been planning for a little bit over a month since it was a recent idea, and Valero worked really hard to conceive it and make sure that we can do it in a relatively timely manner,” MPSH sophomore and TVP head of content creation Lucas Anson said.

With only a short amount of time to prepare, TVP members had to come up with questions and ideas to throw the teachers off of their games. Whether it be unique tasks or videos, TVP had to brainstorm ideas to entertain the student body.

“Our questions are written by multiple teams of writers within TVP. They’re randomly assigned and each category is written by a different pair of people,” Anson said. 

Each class’ student council board had the task of finding teachers to represent their team.The freshman team was made up of Julianne Farkas, Leonel Ruiz, Nicole Swanson and Bianca Mejias. The sophomore team consisted of Marcos Cohen, Armando Gonzalez, Maribel Pizarro and Pamela Shlachtman.

  “In terms of unity and support for one another, myself, Mr. G, Ms. Pizarro and Ms. Shlachtman, whenever we see each other in the hallway, we give ourselves a thumbs up and a power fist of unity and togetherness,” Cohen said.

The class of 2024’s team consisted of Malena Quintela, Dr. Yuria Sharp, Javier Ruiz-Gil and Laken Darst. The seniors, who won the night, had Sara Tuttle, Andrea Spivak, Kenneth Spiegelman and Joel Soldinger on their team.

The teachers went into the trivia with no expectations of what would come.

“I have not much of an idea [of what is going to happen]. We’re going to be given a crash course on how this whole thing operates one hour before the trivia,” Cohen said.

The first round consisted of questions involving MPSH and pop culture. During the next round, each class president picked a teacher from the opposing teams to answer questions regarding their weakest subject matter.

“I’m currently on my hands and knees praying that I don’t get asked anything related to science or math,” Cohen said.

Cohen lucked out with no science and math questions directed his way. Other teachers, such as Spiegelman — who claims he is notoriously bad at math — and Farkas were given math questions, in which they gave up and started drawing pictures on the whiteboard instead.

The night ended in a major success. Students loved to see their teachers struggle with the trivia and enjoyed one last night of fun before AP testing begins.