9. sideways down the length of the tape, making sure ankle bones stay in contact.

If
people lose contact, the group has to start over. This encourages communication
as the group figures out how to inch its way down the tape in a unified way.

10. Play with Clay - Teachers love a learning challenge, so give them a ball of clay
and some toothpicks on a table. Use a piece of painter’s tape to make a line on
the table. The challenge is to make a cantilever structure (one that starts behind
the line but then extends out over the line without touching the table) out of the
toothpicks and clay. The team has 10 minutes to assemble, and the cantilever
structure that extends out the farthest without falling is the winner. (You may
need a ruler to make it official — teachers can be competitive!)

11. Add Five - This is a quick, fun exercise that creative teachers enjoy. Break your
staff into groups of five and give them a piece of paper with the beginning of a
story. Staff members adds five words to the story as they pass the story paper
around. You can start with “I got to school early, and was shocked to find…” or “I
stayed late at school one night, and couldn’t find my…” Have the story paper go
around the group several times (you can predetermine a number according to
how much time you have), and teachers have to make sure the story has a good
conclusion. Share stories at the end!

12. Balloon Tower - Another fun building challenge is to give teams a bag of
deflated balloons and masking tape. The challenge is to create a free-standing
tower as high as possible out of the balloons and tape in a set amount of time.
Come on teachers, use that creativity!

Common Bond Exercise - One team member starts the exercise and stands up to
share about his professional life with the group (education, influences, favorite teaching
moments) and as soon as someone hears something said that they have in common
with the speaker, they jump up and link arms the speaker. The person who jumped up
then shares, starting with the thing they both had in common. As soon as one of the
other teachers hears a commonality, they will get up an link arms with that person and
so on. You can do this with professional information as well as personal information
such as hobbies, where people are