Takoma Park Middle School teacher Joe Evans left his students with a promise: If he got a good report back from the substitute, then they would be the first ones to know why he disappeared for a few days in October.

The kids behaved and Evans honored his word. The reason he’d been absent, he told his seventh graders, was because he’d flown to California to compete on “Jeopardy!”

On Tuesday night, Evans’ parents, friends and fellow teachers packed into Silver Branch Brewing in Silver Spring to stream the episode, cheering each time Evans buzzed in.

“There’s me!” Evans, 42, shouted as a preview of the episode popped up on screen. His husband, Justin Davis-Evans, adjusted the sound so the whole bar could hear host Ken Jennings introduce the contestants.

“Everybody else should scream the answers,” Evans told his friends. “I already did this.”

Evans, of Beltsville, regaled his crowd with the kind of trivia you learn once you’ve been a “Jeopardy!” contestant. How the game show tapes five episodes per day. How you never know when it’s going to be your turn to go behind the lectern.

His friends clapped when Evans’ face popped up on the blue screen, then booed at his two competitors, a stay-at-home dad and an English professor.

When Evans got the first $200 question right, they erupted. The cheers got louder when Evans went into the first commercial break with the lead – and even louder when he found the first Daily Double.

“What is ‘The Kite Runner?’” Evans answered, adding $1,000 to his score with a book title often read in high school English classes.

It’s relatively common for teachers to compete on the Alex Trebek Stage, the Culver City soundstage named for Jennings’ predecessor. But Evans thinks there’s something about working in a middle school that’s particularly helpful when buzzing through trivia questions.

Evans teaches history, but he works alongside experts in a broad array of subjects. He’ll walk by posters in the hallway that remind him of the parts of the lymphatic system. He helped run the Geography Bee. He picks up pop culture tidbits and modern slang from preteen chatter.

“As a middle school teacher, you really do keep in mind a lot of basic knowledge across a lot of different subjects,” he said.

On campus, his upcoming episode provided fodder for the middle school gossip mill. Some kids were convinced he would win, while others roasted him by predicting his loss.

During seventh period on Tuesday, some students started trawling the internet for episode spoilers. Evans had to redirect their research toward a project for National History Day.

Before those spoilers threatened his secret, Evans kept the episode’s ending from almost everyone in his life.

His parents, who travelled from the family’s home in Pennsylvania to watch the episode, had no idea how their son performed. They did know, however, that he’d always been a trivia nerd.

Once, his mother Linda Evans said, the family made a trip to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Young Joe went up to a park ranger and started reciting all the presidents in chronological order.

To prepare for his game show debut, Evans assembled a team for bar trivia — competing at Silver Branch — but they never won there.

Just before 8 p.m., his friends nervously watched to see if the bar trivia loser would become a “Jeopardy!” winner. Evans was solidly in second place, $6,000 behind the stay-at-home dad.

The Final Jeopardy category was literary characters, and the crowd seemed to think that this would give the middle school teacher an advantage.

“There’s a lot of books out there,” Evans cautioned.

To have a chance at winning, Evans needed to wager $6,001. He decided to bet $6,529 — with the $529 in honor of his late mother-in-law’s birthday. She loved Joe and she loved “Jeopardy!”

Evans wanted a piece of her with him on that stage.

The clue flashed on screen: “Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!” says this man.

With his answer, “Who is Scrooge,” Evans became a “Jeopardy!” champion.

Tomorrow, he’ll go back to campus and be Mr. Evans, seventh grade global humanities teacher.

But he’ll stream the episode at school so his students can watch that Final Jeopardy moment with him. On Wednesday night, they can tune in to see him on stage again.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Ben Schock-Phelps' name.