Fall MOUSE Squad Team Training Wrap-Up

After our original Team Training plans were put on hold by Hurricane Sandy, Fall Team Training finally took place at Manhattan’s Hudson High School of Learning Technologies on Saturday, November 17, and boy was it worth the wait!

We started off the day with a Social Scavenger Hunt before the opening ceremonies. As squads arrived at the event, they were broken up into 4 different teams: Green Godzillas, Orange Orcas, Pink Panthers and Yellow Yaks. Students worked on challenges with members of other squads including creating a secret handshake, drawing a MOUSE mascot and writing a short poem or rap about their MOUSE Squads. Once they completed every challenge, students received an awesome Team Training pin!

Then we moved on to our opening ceremony. We talked about our goals for the day and what students should expect. Afterwards, it was time for everyone’s favorite opening activity: the Great MOUSEmallow Tower Challenge! Students were tasked with breaking into six groups and building the tallest freestanding tower out of marshmallows and spaghetti pasta! This year, we added a new twist to the challenge: not only did your MOUSEmallow Tower need to be the tallest one, but it also had to be able to hold the weight of a plastic egg on top of it!

After this exciting kick-off, students rotated through four different workshops (with a lunch break in between). At these workshops Squads learned about using mousesquad.org and CaseTracker, computer hardware basics, understanding and designing school computer networks, and leadership skills.

At the end of the day, students, coordinators and MOUSE staff gathered together to close out Team Training with a raffle drawing and shout-outs to the most memorable people and moments of the day. The Lower East Side Preparatory Squad was the raffle’s big winner! They took home a cool 2-way radio set to use when their squad is working on cases throughout the school building.

We had so much fun at Team Training and were thrilled by the enthusiasm of all of our students and MOUSE Squad Coordinators.

We want to give a special shout-out again to Hudson High School for hosting us again and to members of MOUSE Corps for being awesome facilitators on this important day.