Owen School Teacher Jennifer Williams reported on a friendly Word Search War among staff. “We started the Word Search War in mid-November and it went to the last day of December,” she wrote.

“We had over 30 staff participating between the school and the residential unit. DJ (Toczek) and and Freddy (Maseman) even joined in on the fun. This was a fun way to keep the school and unit connected,” she said.

Jennifer researched word search puzzles and found that they provide many cognitive benefits, such as memory enhancement, stress reduction and focus/concentration. This information helped her persuade other staff members to join in the competition. Each day, staff would go to Classroom 6 to pick up their daily word search. When staff were not at work, they even requested that the word search be emailed to them.

DJ said, "Word Search War is a fun way to break up the workday, giving your brain a break while also encouraging some competitive spirit between coworkers."

The winners were:

1st place: Gaige Gutierrez

2nd place: Madi Speidel

3rd place: John Johnson

“Originally, I had planned just to do the one Word Search War. However, we are now going to do it every month. This was all because PE teacher Josh Johnson came into my classroom yesterday (January 3rd) saying, ‘I feel lost now that I don’t have a word search to do,’” Jennifer wrote.