As we get closer to the end of the 2024 year, the leaves have changed and there’s a cold breeze in the air. This weather impacts a lot of the environment we are living in. Have you wanted to wind down after a long school day and relax? Puzzle Club is one of the only clubs in Mayfield High School where you can interact with others in a peaceful environment. Mrs. Zickes (the club adviser), goes above and beyond to ensure that her members will have a good time. She always provides food and buys puzzles that her members would like! Mrs Zickes shares that she wasn’t originally planning on being the puzzle club administrator but a group of students asked her if she’d like to give it a try. She expresses that it really grew on her and that she can’t see herself not doing it anymore. Her favorite part of puzzle club is that it’s a social interaction shared by different kids from varieties of groups. To add on, she likes the fact that, “They’re not on their phones, they’re working hard, just creating puzzles.” Mrs Zickes elaborates, “she hasn’t seen this type of social interaction in a long time as kids are really tired of electronics, different social groups within the school are working together and getting to know one another without social media.” 

One of the problems she encountered at first was when she saw that the puzzles students were working on were unfinished. If you didn’t know, Mrs Zickes is also an English teacher at MHS. Her club is in her classroom and she needs that space for her English students, so this was a problem for her. She overcame this by creating space for the puzzles and putting them there if they were not finished. For the puzzles that were completed, she would glue the pieces together and hang them up! Another issue she faced, when she’d go out to look for puzzles she thought her students would enjoy, most of the time they were really expensive. Mrs Zickes managed this with the help of one of her club members, Destiny Holly. Destiny would go out of her way to help and buy puzzles for the club! She’s a sophomore who’s always looking forward to spending time with others building puzzles. Destiny learned through puzzle club that it’s okay to not know something’s and to always keep in mind that learning and growing are important. To add on, in her opinion she believes that the best part of puzzles is that they improve short-term memory and they can help with problem-solving. Another Sophomore, Lily White when asked what puzzle was the hardest for her she explains the flower puzzle. She says this because it has so many varieties of colors and it’s very difficult to find the correct pieces. A technique she learned was to start out on the ends and then work on the middle.