I may be bias but I work at one of the BEST places with the BEST coworkers! Alice C. Stelle is a great school with such a supportive staff and we all get along really well. They also put up with my crazy antics daily! Last year when I receive my pink slip for like the 100th time, I was tired of being sad and upset about it. So I created a bucket list of everything that I had to do before I could possible have to leave Stelle forever :( And my fabulous staff went along with it and helped me complete it. From doing a science experiment to helping at the crosswalk and being the voice of the morning announcements they helped turn the stressful time into fun!
So when I started to put together this 30 before 30 list I knew that I wanted to include my work family into my celebration of my last year in my 20s! And what better way to do that then do the most epic and exciting thing that Stelle has ever seen? The only question was...what could that possibly be? Since my birthday is in May I didn't see this item getting done before the end of the school year...Then I talked to my friend Lisa. Lisa is my yearbook counterpart at A.E. Wright middle school. We were talking about the end of the year slideshows that we have to put on for our schools when she said that she was going to try to get some of her guy teachers to pretend to be the boy band One Direction and make a music video. For those of you who aren't a teenage girl or don't work at a middle school One Direction is like the *Nsync or Backstreet Boys of the time and SUPER popular (but don't tell the girls that...they like to think this whole boy band thing is something they discovered)! I knew this was something that had to be done at Stelle as well and with Lisa's blessing I set out to recruit the guys.
Remember how I said that I have the best coworkers? They guys all signed on without me having to do much convincing and what started out as "I'll just come to your classroom and film you singing a couple lines at your desk" quickly turned into much more! They guys soon took over and before I knew it we were going to do it all at lunch in the MPR after Renaissance Faire. There would be a green screen to make it look like we were at the ocean like the actual music video and we would have to be in costume.
We filmed the whole thing in 45 minutes on May 16th and then came the hard part...keeping it a secret from the kids until June 8th when the 8th graders would be the first to see it. And I have to say how proud I am of everyone...It was a total surprise to EVERYONE!!! Even my yearbook students. After the 30 minute slideshow ended the 8th graders were cheering and then came the surprise. I started with a bunch of slides to try to quiet the students down from the cheering so they could hear the surprise. It was so cute to see the students interacting with the slides. One said, "are you ready?" and the whole 8th grade class yelled..."Yes!" Then the music video started and it was so funny, the students really didn't know how to react. This is the first time in the history of these slideshows that we have done anything like this. They went from not knowing what was going on to laughter and cheers. At the end of the video I have never heard cheers as loud as I did then. I am so proud that we pulled it off and the response from the students was priceless. All the guys and myself were having students come up to us telling us how cool it was and what a surprise it was. In the words of one student, "That, Ms. Dickinson, was EPIC!" Mission Accomplished!!
*As of now we are not putting the video up online. But...they guys are thinking about it and if they all decide that it is okay, I'll put the video up! For now here is the video of the student's reactions!! Enjoy!
So when I started to put together this 30 before 30 list I knew that I wanted to include my work family into my celebration of my last year in my 20s! And what better way to do that then do the most epic and exciting thing that Stelle has ever seen? The only question was...what could that possibly be? Since my birthday is in May I didn't see this item getting done before the end of the school year...Then I talked to my friend Lisa. Lisa is my yearbook counterpart at A.E. Wright middle school. We were talking about the end of the year slideshows that we have to put on for our schools when she said that she was going to try to get some of her guy teachers to pretend to be the boy band One Direction and make a music video. For those of you who aren't a teenage girl or don't work at a middle school One Direction is like the *Nsync or Backstreet Boys of the time and SUPER popular (but don't tell the girls that...they like to think this whole boy band thing is something they discovered)! I knew this was something that had to be done at Stelle as well and with Lisa's blessing I set out to recruit the guys.
