Who eliminated Mr. Wolfy?
That was the question on the mind for Spring Harbor Middle School students participating in a fun day that was themed around the board game Clue in April.
Spring Harbor holds a fun day each quarter, which involves a special schedule with activities. While the day offers a reprieve from traditional lessons, it also serves as a hands-on exercise in critical thinking for students as they work together to gather and synthesize information hidden in each clue.
Typically staff would organize the day, but that all changed last year when three dedicated student council members decided to take the task on themselves.
“We already have fun days at school, but they’re usually half-days, so why not go all out and make a full-day fun day ourselves,” eighth grade student Sanjay Ramesh, leader of the Fun Day committee and former student council president said. “It was just something that popped in my mind during the sixth hour orchestra class last year, and Sylvia Pfleger was my stand partner so she was the first person I told.”
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They dove into planning head-first with a third student council member, Elicia Traverse, and put together a Harry Potter themed fun day at the end of the 2024-25 school year. It was a smash hit with the student body, but was described as “chaotic.”
Despite the chaos, the trio knew they wanted to plan a new fun day this year, and decided they would need a lot more help to pull it together.
“Sanjay had this vision for what the day would look like, and we all helped make it happen,” Spring Harbor librarian Jessica Schmitz said. “We got the entire student council together over the summer to start planning everything from what games we were going to play to how we can get teachers involved.”
Including the entire student council meant a lot more ideas to work through and a lot more people who needed to be involved. That meant that planning did not stop once the summer was over.
Pfleger said she could not even keep track of the number of hours they had spent in the library planning Clue Day.
“It was obviously very stressful at times,” she said. “But it’s something that I continued to do because I genuinely enjoyed this.”
By the end of the planning phase students had created 63 total clues and a mystery that would unravel throughout the day. Each participating teacher had also created a team theme and recruited students to become part of their sleuthing agency.
Then, on Friday morning, Clue Day started when Spring Harbor’s beloved mascot Wolfy was murdered by a mystery teacher in a mystery room with a mystery weapon.
As the day progressed each team would spend time completing one of six activities — like Uno, musical chairs or a mini-Clue game called Murdle. If they successfully completed their activity the team was awarded a handful of the 63 clues to key in on the culprit.
“Our student council members run the stations and help us dole out clues,” Schmitz said. “Then when teams are ready to make a guess we can tell them if one of their three guesses is correct or incorrect, just like in the board game.”
Once the sixth rotation ended and it was time for each team to make their final guess, student council members once again leapt into action — literally — running from classroom to classroom giving out last-second clues.
Everyone then moved to the gym, where Ramesh, Pfleger and Traverse would read the correct answers and crown a winning team.
Turns out, it was Ms. Cindi Lewis, in the nursery with the poisoned taco.
When the solution was announced two teams broke out into cheers. They had each guessed correctly, and earned themselves ice cream sundaes.
“The whole day was a bit stressful, but it’s great that we made something that let the whole Spring Harbor community have fun,” Pfleger said. “When we look back on it later in life it’ll be great to have these happy memories at school.”
After Ms. Lewis had been taken “downtown,” students gathered around Ramesh and lifted him into the air. With big smiles they thanked him for helping turn Clue Day into a reality.
“I’m just really grateful that we were able to get this much freedom to plan something that not many other schools do,” Ramesh said. “We put together something incredible and I’m really happy and proud to have been a part of it.”
