Senior Zoë "Harry Potter" Schein defends herself against junior Karen "Big Scary Dementor" Han in IMPROV! class. Photos by Sarah Lake-Rayburn. (Click to create a slideshow)

Senior Michelle Gao (right) tries to calm the situation as subfreshman Maia Gersten goes on a chair-wielding rampage. (Click to create a slideshow)

Subfreshmen Rosa Druker (left) and Rodney LeNoir talk unsuspectingly as senior Zoë Schein attempts to army-crawl away. (Click to create a slideshow)

By the way: The whole “Iguana Monkeys” thing is what we decided IMPROV would stand for, were it an acronym, one day at lunch several months ago. It actually is an abbreviation, which stands for “improvisation,” in case you didn't know.

Brrrrrrrrrrrr

It’s fifth hour, and about 20 people of various ages are standing in a circle. Well, they’re not standing in a circle.

They are actually shaking their hands, feet, heads, and butts in an effort to somewhat resemble some fairly spastic penguins, singing/chanting at the tops of their lungs.

This is IMPROV! class, and this is the penguin warm-up, one of many energetic and fairly embarrassing games that fellow teacher Sarah Lake-Rayburn and I opted to “torture” our students with throughout the week. In fact, it’s how we began the class.

After some hilarious penguin dancing and pony-riding, the entire class gathered on the stage while Sarah and I stood in front of them, relishing our power as the teachers of the class (or at least I was).

Apparently it hadn’t occurred to us that we could have made up a game in which members of the class brought us cookies and gave us back massages. Darn.

We decided to start off with a game of Freeze, a classic improv game in which two people act out a scene using lots of movement. People watching can yell "freeze!" and take the place of one of the actors, getting into the same position they had been in and starting a whole new scene.

Many were forced to profess their love to one another. Others pretended to be comparing hand sizes or pretending to be someone's mother. Zoë Schein conquered the Karen-Han-dementor with a Patronus, and I almost killed a subbie with a chair. It was a good day.

Random-pieces-of-paper-on-the-floor-day

Wednesday was almost equally as good, featuring a game I like to call the pick-up-the-pieces-of- paper-from-the-floor-and-read-them-out-loud game. Sarah and I had spent our fourth-hour class (80s and Robots) writing random sentences on little pieces of paper while we watched “Transformers.”

Much to the confusion of many, we scattered these pieces of paper on the floor. While people acted out random scenes, Sarah or I would shout “Line!,” which prompted one of the actors to pick up a random slip of paper and incorporate the line into the scene.

While slightly unorganized, it was a fun game. We also played a game called Ding. This time, instead of shouting "Line!" someone would shout "Ding!" after someone spoke, forcing them to come up with something new to say.

It got confusing, especially when there were three people in the scene, all talking at once (it was supposed to be a slumber party … no one takes turns speaking at a slumber party), but it was entertaining.

After two days, I was already exhausted. Teaching was fun and fairly easy with this class, but some unruly subbies were wearing out my vocal cords and my patience.

You are one step closer to becoming America's Next Top Model

Thursday, during fourth hour, Sarah and I wrote different identities on little pieces of paper. Some were book or movie characters. Some were celebrities. Some were just generic people. Dumbledore. Dr. House. A psychiatrist. Tyra Banks. A reformed stripper.

First, we played Party Quirks. One person was to be the host of the “party.” Five other people were the guests. Each of the guests picked one of the identities out of a hat and went to the party as whoever they had picked.

The host then had to guess what each person was. I got to be Tim Gunn, from “Project Runway,” which was extremely fun.

After several rounds of this, we moved on to Bachelor(ette). Zoë was looking for love and was hoping to find it in a line of bachelor(ette)s.

Each of them had drawn an identity, and she was interviewing them, asking them where they would take her on a date, what they would do to her if she were ice cream, etc, etc. All the while, she had to guess what each of them was supposed to be.

Several more rounds of this game and an unbelievably abysmal Martha Stewart imitation by me rounded out the day nicely, and I was sad to realize that we only had one more Agora Day left.

Your hair is so fierce

On Friday, we started out with one of my favorite games, Hitchhiker. Three people pretend they're in a car, and someone stands off to the side, hitchhiking. When the person gets in a car, he or she takes on some sort of personality — valley girl, robot, schizophrenic, etc. — and then everyone else in the car has to adopt that personality, too.

The driver eventually has to find a reason to leave the car, allowing room for a new hitchhiker, and everyone rotates. The game moves quickly and allows for a lot of people to participate.

It got pretty hilarious. Everyone ended up singing at one point. We were germophobes. We were British. We were spies. We were hillbillies. We were drama queens. It was one totally stereotypical but hilarious personality after another.

We finished the week off with a final game of Freeze. Thoroughly exhausted by this point, I went through four rounds while lying on the floor with my arms stretched out. I was Superman, a crucifix, a scarecrow, and a dead body. Then the bell rang, and IMPROV! class was over until next year.

It was a crazy week filled with lots of laughter, dancing, singing, and a little bit of yelling. Turns out that Sarah and I are not extremely good at dealing with out-of-control shouts of “Can I go next?” and “Is it my turn yet?” or “Can I please have another brownie?” It was hard to make it fair for everyone and make sure everyone got a turn.

I'm sad it's over, but I'm also kind of glad. Agora Week is always a lot more tiring than regular school for some reason, even without the tests and homework and fitness, especially while teaching two classes. I did enjoy teaching, though, and look forward to doing it again next year.

Plus, there's always Improv Club on Tuesdays in the North Attic for anyone who wants to come (quite often featuring cookie-dough brownies and “America's Next Top Model” impressions).