Reality sets in for Siska

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FOX RIVER GROVE – Seventh-graders at Prairie Middle School in Barrington have seen Jason Siska both in their history class and on their TV competing on “Survivor: Micronesia – Fans vs. Favorites” this spring.

A student gave the Fox River Grove man an “idol” carved on a stick after seeing Siska find a fake immunity idol early in the “Survivor” season. For his 23rd birthday, which was March 4, another student gave him a doll modeled after Chet Welch, a competitor who had a reputation for laziness.

But his students got a dose of reality Friday, when Siska missed class after being voted off the island in Thursday’s episode.

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Siska had flown to Los Angeles for the requisite round of news media interviews, although he told his family earlier that he was just visiting his brother.

His mentor teacher, Mike Gordon, explained some female competitors’ mean-spirited scheming left Siska blind-sided when his torch was extinguished at tribal council.

“We make it a point to tell the kids that he played the game straight up and didn’t have to resort to that kind of back-stabbing,” Gordon said. “We have to make a distinction between a reality TV show and what is reality. At least I did [Thursday] in class, especially to the girls.”

Gordon said there had been more eighth-grade girls hanging around his seventh-grade classroom in recent weeks; and Siska said many of the boys look up to him as well. His student-teaching assignment will wrap up Friday before he travels to New York for Survivor’s live finale. The Illinois State University senior took a semester off last fall to film the show and said landing a job at Prairie Middle School “would be a dream come true.”

“I try to get them to think outside of the box and want to live outside of the box,” Siska said. “If I could teach my kids one thing, it would be to be unique and different and to not be afraid to be one of those things.”

If the job doesn’t pan out, he might spend some time sailing in the Caribbean on his uncle’s boat or launching an adventure travel business. Siska earned a cash prize for participating in the show, but he’s not allowed to reveal the amount.

He spent nine days after he left the game surfing and wake-boarding with Ozzy Lusth, who had been his main competitor before, and he wouldn’t mind some more extreme camping and competition, Survivor-style.

“In a second, if they have another season of favorites, I would love to come back,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “I can only cross my fingers and hope.”

Months after he actually left the game, Siska said he would not take any grudges into next month’s vote in which several competitors choose the million-dollar winner. He’ll vote for the person who played the game best physically, politically and mentally.

“I probably could have played a little better social game,” Siska said. “But I have no regrets.

“Some of the people who were out there, we just didn’t click.”

His younger brother, Adam of the band The Academy Is..., isn’t as understanding. He said Friday that he was rooting for Cirie [Fields], a master schemer. But he’s not sure whether he’ll invite the competitors he blames for his brother’s exit to a party he and his bandmates are planning to celebrate the finale.

“Jason may be polite to them, but I’m not holding back,” Adam Siska said. “I’ve got a vendetta against Parvati [Shallow] and Natalie [Bolton]. Everyone else is fine by me.”