Nicole D’Silva | The Chronicle
This semester at Mason High School (MHS) marks the beginning of a new collaborative project between students in Advanced Placement (AP) Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism (E&M), AP Literature and Composition (Lit) and AP Calculus BC. Students work on the project in groups of approximately 10 students each to create 12 puzzles in a themed escape room for fifth graders.
The idea started a decade ago when MHS AP Physics C teacher Dee Dee Messer created the project for her students to design escape rooms for one team of fifth graders and one team of sixth graders. Messer said her students loved the project, but it was a lot of work and a big time commitment.
MHS AP Lit teacher Nichole Wilson has been doing joint projects with Messer for about six years. Messer pitched the escape room project idea to Wilson, inviting Amy McDonald’s AP Calculus BC students to join. Wilson said that the project is beneficial to students because it allows them to transfer common skills between classes.
“We know that the workforce [is] increasingly interdisciplinary, where you have to use all of the skills for a project,” Wilson said. “So we thought, why not come up with something that not only engages our students, but creates an authentic product, where our students have to consider another audience? In developing the escape room themes, we’ve asked them to consider things like social and emotional learning behaviors of fifth graders and the interests of fifth graders.”
MHS senior and AP Lit student Ayushi Datta said that she values having interdisciplinary skills in her group. Datta has 10 students in her group, but many of her members are in classes in which the project overlaps.
“Being in all those classes means that you have a growing amount of knowledge in those subjects,” Datta said. “I feel like having perspectives from all of these classes as one person is a very strong asset to have. You gain respect for all subjects on their own. I really appreciate people who are in all three classes, or two of those classes, who can bring in a very nuanced and interdisciplinary perspective to this project. I like that we’re all working together for a shared goal.”
Datta said she is excited to work with the fifth graders, hoping to make the experience fun for them, which motivates her.
“I enjoy working with kids so much, so this is one of the reasons I’m really excited for the project,” Datta said. “I want to see the fifth-graders’ reactions to being in Escape Rooms made by high schoolers, because I really hope that they enjoy it the most they can.”
When planning the escape room project, the teachers learned that Wilson had never been in an escape room before, so they decided to go to one together. Wilson said the experience was beneficial.
“I think that this has actually been helpful for me in explaining the concept to students who also may have never been [to an escape room],” Wilson said. “I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as challenged as I did. I wasn’t familiar with the rhythm of how the puzzles were solved normally, and I would imagine that it would be more of a linear type of progression. [But] it’s a little bit messy.”
Messer said the escape room experience was fun and that she wants the project to be enjoyable in a similar way for her students.
“The vast majority [of our students] are seniors, and it’s second semester senior year,” Messer said. “We know the drain starts coming, they can see the end and they just want to be at the next level. So this [project] is supposed to be a step from normal and help them remember why they signed up for our classes and have one really fun last Mason moment before they take off. We’re hoping this becomes a legacy project and our fifth graders, who will be participants maybe seven years from now, are the creators and designers.”
Part of the escape room’s requirements is to have a theme that the room and puzzles are centered around. MHS junior and AP Calculus BC student Swarna Viswanathan came up with her group’s theme.
“Our theme is Cheese Escape, which is a game on Roblox,” Viswanathan said. “I thought it would be a fun theme for fifth graders [to] connect to, because Cheese Escape was a really [popular] game.”
Viswanathan is in a 10-person group with fellow MHS juniors Lohita Kani and Evan Chiu. Chiu is the group leader and said that leading the group can get complicated.
“It’s [difficult] because coordinating a team of 10 is a lot harder than a team of three,” Chiu said. “But I think [as] it becomes more efficient, then there will be a lot of progress made.”
McDonald said that working with a big team is a concern among the teachers, but they hope that the students will rise to the challenge, collaborating well within their groups.
“[We want to] make sure [our students] understand that to be a very good team member, and almost all jobs are in teams now, people are counting on you,” McDonald said. “You don’t get to just not do something because you didn’t want to. You’ve got to start thinking outside of just yourself.”
Photo by Nicole D’Silva
(Left to right) Swarna Viswanathan, Anvitha Karkarlapudi, Lohita Kani, May Lee and Andrew Close work together to design their themed escape room on their computers.
Kani said that being a part of a big team can provide new perspectives, which can help them better navigate challenges.
“I believe that the sheer amount of creativity that our group has, which I attribute to our size, is what has helped us maintain our current progress,” Kani said. “Splitting tasks amongst ourselves evens out the workload and allows us to truly cherish the process of spreading the love of STEM to our future generation of MHS students.”
Since fifth graders will be solving the escape room puzzles, Viswanathan said she is eager to see their reactions, but knows that they will be her biggest critics.
“It’s scary, because I know that the [fifth graders] are pretty judgmental,” Viswanathan said. “But I’m also excited because it’s fun to talk to kids. They say funny things, and you get to bring out your inner child.”
Similar to Viswanathan’s group, MHS senior and AP Lit student Layla Das’ team decided to make their escape room game themed, inspired by concepts from “Wreck it, Ralph” and the “Jumanji” movies.
“The room is going to be entirely themed as if the [fifth graders] are stuck in the video game, having to interact with video games like Legend of Zelda, Minecraft and Roblox,” Das said. “We’re having our members dress up as characters from games, which I think will be really fun.”
Das said she really likes the theme because it resonates with her, as she grew up playing various video games. She said the escape room will be a memorable and fun experience for both the high schoolers and fifth graders involved.
“I love the idea of escaping into a new and unique world where you get to do things you’ve never done before,” Das said. “It’s that kind of imagination that escape rooms need to rely on to stay interesting. Making the escape room into a video game theme plays [into] a bit of every kid’s imagination. I mean, the entire idea of video games is to get lost in the game and to be immersed in that world.”
