Teachers at a primary school in York spent 10 days playing a "hysterical" game based on a hit BBC show.
Staff at Wilberfoss Primary School decided to try out playing a game of Traitors, as seen on the BBC show hosted by Claudia Winkleman.
"One of our colleagues at school had seen an idea online and thought to do it at school for team building because January is a bit of a grey month," Jo Dyer, a teacher at the school said.
"She went round staff and asked them to take part, in the end there was 21 staff that took part."
Jo said she wanted to take part but in a neutral role, she then became the game's host: Clau-Dyer.
After each teacher came in on Monday, January 20, they were handed an envelope revealing whether they were a traitor or faithful. After this, Kirsten Cooper was chosen as the sole traitor, with 19 'faithfuls' to beat.
The game relies on the singular traitor 'murdering' the faithfuls day by day, as the faithfuls have a chance to vote out who they suspect to be the traitor each evening.
Jo said: "It got quite hysterical, from the Wednesday I came up with tasks for the traitors to complete without being found out. The first task, for example, was to retrieve one glue stick from three different classrooms."
Kirsten said that avoiding suspicion from her colleagues wasn't the only challenge. She added: "It's not just the teaching staff noticing you, but the 200 children who know about the game watching your every move.
"Lunch times in the staff room were quite the event, as a traitor I had to keep my head down."
The evening 'round table' discussions were carried out on WhatsApp, as Kirsten recruited Mel Cartmail to join her as a traitor, and they discussed who to 'murder' in a separate conversation with Clau-Dyer.
"From my point of view it was hysterical because I could see it from both points of view," Jo said.
"At 10 o'clock I’d put a poll on for people to banish someone, and the next morning I’d write them off the board and record a video of them revealing whether they were a faithful or a traitor."
As the eventual winners of the game, Kirsten said life as a traitor began to become a stressful affair.
"In the first week it was absolutely fine, but towards the end of the second week it did get quite stressful, and my name was mentioned a couple of times," she said.
"We made an agreement that if there was too much suspicion on me I would take the hit so the traitors could still win, it was all done in good spirit."
Jo said the game had "no impact on teaching whatsoever", as she found ways to incorporate the school children into the game itself.
She added: "I lost a lot of hours sleep on this. I ended up a few times going to bed with a piece of paper and a pen because I kept thinking of ideas."
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