Free State high school media, film and broadcast instructor Scott Smith prepares to tape a team of teachers answering trivia questions for a recent episode of Are

Jason Springer is a bit of a trivia hound. A social studies teacher at Free State High School, Springer sometimes shuttles over to Conroy’s Pub on Wednesdays to play a few rounds of trivia with his friends. On occasion he watches “Jeopardy!”

And about four or five times per semester, he competes on the game show “Are You Smarter than a Teacher?”

Free State High School teachers celebrate a correct answer during a trivia game taping at the school in December. From left are Jacob Larson, Diane Toplikar, Marsha Poholsky, Jason Springer and Alice Karakas.

A Free State original, “Are You Smarter Than a Teacher?” is a game show where teachers compete against students by answering questions from six different categories. Category examples include television, movies, music and bird’s nest, which highlights a different subject every time. Questions are usually pop culture related and can focus on anything from breakfast cereals to James Bond movies.

“I’ve only missed one or two (episodes),” Springer says. “It’s great. It gives students an opportunity to interact with the staff in a setting that goes beyond a sport or a classroom.”

The game show is the brainchild of Scott Smith, a film, media and broadcast teacher at Free State. Overseer of Firebird Productions, the student-run film group, Smith wanted to develop a creative project for his film students.

“I wanted to do something video-oriented that would help bring teachers and students together in an entertaining manner that would be hard to ignore and fun to watch,” Smith says. “I’d seen a game show on MetroSports called ‘Braggin’ Rights’ and thought, ‘Hey, we could do something like that!'”

Smith records each episode and sends the footage to the film room. Students from Firebird Productions clip and splice the video together.

Regan Kahler, a junior at Free State, has been working on the game show off and on for about four months. It’s Kahler’s first year as a member of the Firebird Productions Crew. So far, she has slid into laughter on more than one occasion while editing footage from the show.

“Going back and editing the show is very enjoyable because it’s fun to see how much the teachers know of our generation’s entertainment and how much the students know of our teachers’ generation’s entertainment,” she says. “There are some questions that the teachers will take a long time to answer and go back and forth on answers that it’s difficult to sit there and watch because you’re thinking, ‘Seriously? How do you not know the answer to this?'”

Kahler likes the fact that any student can participate on a student team. The student group is different each time, and it operates on a volunteer basis. Each episode, up to seven students compete against a group of teachers, which remains relative static.

“I think this project is valuable because it involves so many people in our school,” Kahler says. “There is the team of teachers who stays pretty constant in the lineup, there is the team of students who is different every episode, therefore involving many Free State students, and then there is the video crew who works on the editing.”

Four or five students help edit each episode. Students entrench themselves in crafting title screens, locating pictures and doing voice-overs.

“Several of my Firebird Productions students … edit and coordinate post-production,” Smith says. “It’s a great experience for them to manage a program of that size as well as hone their editing skills and meet production deadlines.”

While Firebird students are immersed in the production process, other students are busy testing their memories, hoping to remember inane bits of knowledge that will help them defeat the teachers.

“We all worked really hard and tried our best to defeat the teachers,” says Karla Barteldes, a Free State junior. “Last year I helped our team get one step closer to victory by correctly answering a question about Pokemon.”

Though they’ve gotten close a couple of times — two ties and a few tight games — students have yet to beat the teachers. If they can manage to snag a win, students will be able to stroll the hallways wearing T-shirts with the slogan “I am Smarter Than a Teacher!”

But, as long as students are competing against teachers like Springer, who has degrees in three subjects — philosophy, history and education — they face a difficult challenge.

“I love a good game of trivia,” Springer says.