I position myself deliberately beside Billy’s group so that I can keep an eye on him. To my utter surprise, as soon as the video stops playing, Billy jumps up from his seat and at speed, starts to toss his ideas around and share this theories with his partner. He is visibly excited to tackle this problem. The first thing out of his mouth? “The slowest people have to go together because it will take as long as the slowest person - it won’t be one plus the other - and by pairing the 10-minute and 5-minute people together, you can minimize the time wasted.” WOW! It took probably a mere few seconds for him to get to this important point - in fact, this is the key to solving this riddle - that many other were overlooking. When I gave the same problem to my spouse who is an electrical engineer (Double E!) (who is also a video game lover, coincidentally), it took just about the same time for him to reach the same conclusion as Billy.

Although it took some efforts for Billy and his partner to get to the second key point, which is to send the fastest pair across the bridge first so that after the slow pair has reached the other side, someone fast can run back to get you --- I asked them, “How can you avoid sending the janitor (5-minute person) back across the bridge, is there a way?” --- Billy soon got it all figured out. Knowing that video gamers love to share their strategies with each other, I asked Billy to go over each step from the beginning for his partner (he looked a tad perplexed) so that he can also wrap his head around the solution. After his partner also got it --- “Aaaaah! I see!” --- I moved on to help another group. As I was checking in with the group members  --- “It think this is impossible. No matter what we do, we are off by a minute or two.” --- Billy poked his head out and said, “Can I tell them how I did it?” I really liked the idea of putting him in the position of a teacher so I told Billy, “That is fantastic! One thing, Billy. Don’t just give them the answer, okay? Your job is to help them along to get to the answer. Give them hints! Not the answer!” Billy nodded and as I left the table, he was trying to get the other students to understand that they have to use logic well to get to the answer.

Another fantastic thing happened when my Associate Teacher asked the class whether anyone was able to figure out the answer and whether they were willing to share the solution with the class. Billy (!) actually volunteered to present in front of the class. This was the first time that I have ever seen him volunteer to share his work. Needless to say, as far as Billy is concerned, this was a big triumph. On this day, he did not even once try to escape the classroom and he was engaged 100% the entire time. I would hazard a guess that it was the element of strategy and logic that really spoke to Billy. For me, it was a testament to how fragile and flimsy our (teachers’) labels of “kids with/out behavioural issues” are. Billy was an exemplary student on this day, because he was fully engaged with the task at hand. Grade 7 students are currently working on fractions, decimals, and percentage. If we could find some kind of strategy games involving fractions, decimals, and percentage, we could include these games as one of the problems that students can work on as part of differentiated instructional tools. It was a rainy misty Halloween but it was a good day.