Pieces Fall Into Place for Sherrard Middle Puzzle Club
Emma Delk Trending
SHERRARD -- The lunch period runs differently for eighth-grade teachers at Sherrard Middle School. After quickly eating whatever food they brought, one by one, each teacher hurries over to the rotating puzzle board located on the breakroom table and takes a seat.
From there, the cover of the puzzle table is removed, and members of the Sherrard Middle School Puzzle Club dig into the next puzzle on their agenda to complete.
While the group is now equipped with a Playboda-brand lazy susan puzzle table with removable puzzle trays, the puzzle club had humble beginnings.
The group began two years ago when eighth-grade math teacher Greg Oliver began working on a "Tiger King"-themed puzzle left behind in the break room. As Oliver worked, other eighth-grade teachers on their lunch break joined in, pointing out spots where they thought a piece might fit.
As the group began to form after completing the first puzzle, another "Tiger King" puzzle was purchased for the break room for teachers to complete in their spare time.
However, the pictures of "Joe Exotic" they completed were not complicated enough to satisfy the growing group of puzzle enthusiasts. Oliver had figured out that the puzzle pieces were cut the same way for both "Tiger King" puzzles, with only the orientation distinguishing the two puzzles.
After Oliver's realization, the teachers began to branch out in the theme and increase the difficulty of the puzzles they completed.
Today, the puzzle club consists of seventh and eighth-grade math teacher Kelly Hamrick, eighth-grade social studies teacher Jeff Stephens, eighth-grade English teacher Monica Klamut, eighth-grade science teacher Jill Stephens-Lima, robotics teacher Ana Klemm, woodshop and greenhouse teacher Bryan Berger and STEM teacher Bricie Brannan.
Founding member Oliver declined to comment on his withdrawal from the club, joking that it was too "upsetting" for him to recount. Though Oliver is gone, other teachers have kept up the club's tradition.
Brannan has taken over supplying puzzles for the group, and club members particularly enjoy completing holiday-themed puzzles. So far, the group has completed Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day puzzles and is getting ready to begin their Halloween-themed piece.
In total, the group has completed more than 25 puzzles ranging from 500 to 1,000 pieces. Hamrick estimated that it takes the group, on average, a month to complete each one.
The group tries to keep a set pace with their puzzle-making. Hamrick said the goal for each session is for every member to have placed at least one piece in the puzzle they're working on.
Some club members came to the group with more puzzle-making experience, while others had zero interest in the hobby before joining the group. Klemm said the group provided an outlet for her puzzle enthusiasm, as her husband was not interested in the hobby.
"It's really nerdy but so much fun," Klemm said. "I had only completed puzzles with another person before, and it's even more entertaining to work in a group while doing one."
The atmosphere can get feisty when the group gets down to the wire on a puzzle.
"Towards the end, when we have maybe a day or two left before we complete a puzzle and are down to the nitty-gritty, Jeff will make sure to steal puzzle pieces," Hamrick said. "We think it's because he wants to be the one to finish it."
Apart from the occasional thievery accusation toward the end of a puzzle, the group has a high level of camaraderie while working on a puzzle.
"We pick on each other the entire time we are putting the puzzle together, which makes a really fun atmosphere," Hamrick said. "If somebody says something that reminds them of a song, everybody bursts into song. The same thing happens with movie quotes, too, so it can become ridiculous sometimes."
Berger added that puzzle sessions can often devolve into "roast sessions."
"There's not a ton of calmness, it's more like a roast session a lot of times," Berger said. "Jeff gets really mad when he can't find a piece, so he will literally go through and take one piece at a time and try to put it in a spot. It can be a completely different color, and he's still trying to put it in there anyway, so he gets teased a lot for that."
Brannan joked the group's camaraderie is unrivaled amongst the sixth and seventh-grade lunch periods. She has even ensured the group will never split up by conflicting lunch schedules.
"When our former principal was leaving, before the new principal came in, I went and glued all our names down to one spot on the schedule for lunch," Brannan said. "We mostly all teach the same grade, so it lines up typically, but that was an extra precaution."
Over the many lunch periods the group has spent pouring over puzzles, they have become adept at the intricacies of solving one. As they worked together to complete the "Chaos at the Aquarium" puzzle during a lunch break, members called out the various puzzle shapes they needed, from "protuberances" to "double-holers."
In addition to the terminology, the group has also acquired the equipment required for fast puzzle completion. The group's puzzle board, which Berger notes was a "game-changer" for their operation, allows members to rotate sections of the puzzle to each other and store pieces underneath the puzzle in drawers.
"The board allows us to rotate the puzzle all the way around," Berger said. "It also comes with a cover so no one else can work on the puzzle while we're gone. We really don't mess around when it comes to our puzzles."
The greatest challenge to the group's puzzle-making prowess thus far was a 550-piece puzzle in the shape of a ram's head, which they decided to complete as the animal is Sherrard's mascot. However, without the help of easily identifiable corner pieces in the puzzle, group members often left their lunch period frustrated with their progress on the ram's head.
"When we open a puzzle, we sort the edges and the centers," Klamut noted. "This one, the edges were not your typical edges, so it was really difficult."
"It was the fact that the Ram was almost all one color, too, which also made it really tough," Stephens-Lima added. "It was nothing like the puzzles we normally do."
Though it was a challenge, the group eventually conquered the ram's head. Brannan plans to glue the puzzle together, frame it and hang it in the break room. Brannan has already glued and framed the first "Tiger King" puzzle the group completed to also hang in the break room.
The puzzle club has also moved their escapades beyond the breakroom table. The group members fondly recalled the scavenger hunt Stephens had left behind for them in the cafeteria when he took a trip to Charleston after being appointed to the West Virginia House of Delegates.
"I took pieces of a puzzle and hid them around the old lunchroom with little riddles they had to solve to find them," Stephens said. "The pieces were under salt shakers, in the freezer, behind a lamp and all around the calendar. They swore I took the last piece of the puzzle with me, but I had just hid it so well."
With so many puzzles completed and memories made as a group, a tradition has begun to commemorate each year the club has spent together. After the group made a puzzle out of a photo of themselves from their first year, each year after, they now take a photo of themselves completing the photo puzzle from last year to turn into another puzzle.
As they continue to create their nested puzzle photos each year, the group plans to hang each group puzzle photo on the break room walls.
"We can sometimes cause a ruckus, but it's a lot of fun," Lyons said. "I would challenge someone to go to any other school and go to their lunch period and see this same level of camaraderie."