Hassan Elementary #MannequinChallenge

Here's the setup... It's a Friday. It's the last day of school before the kids get a week off and the teachers have conferences.  There has been the 'super' moon for the last couple of days... that means not just a full moon, but a super full moon.  The whole school dressed in 50's style on Thurs. to celebrate 50 days of school. We had BINGO as a PBIS celebration on Thurs. It's Mickey Mouses Birthday on Friday, lots of Mickey Ears on little heads. To top it off, it's indoor recess because of rain and wind.  In fact, the whole state of Minnesota is under winter weather watch because the first snow of the school year is about to happen today, many of our neighboring schools not too far to the north were closed for the day.

I'm going to be real with you for a minute (as I always am on this blog) I was scared to go to school. All I could imagine was so much craziness for the whole day and not in a good way.  I'm mean who can blame them.  For some of these kids, it's the fifth time they have experienced a first snow of the season in their lifetime.  They deserve to be excited... I just didn't want to teach them on a day like this. 

So I sent out an email to my staff inviting them to share the Sesame Street: Mannequin Challenge video with their kids and then if they wanted to participate in the Mannequin Challenge, I would come by during my prep and take a shot of it, splice the three or four videos together and share it with parents.  My hidden thought was we could call out Mannequin Challenge anytime during the day and have a minute of quiet and still... Teachers will survive!

I was amazed at the response.  Teachers were totally on board, I got emails back from so many of my coworkers who were totally on board.  It was overwhelming, and beautiful, and fun.  So during my breaks in the day I was running around the school calling out the challenge and filming.  It was amazing! 

I got 20 minutes of clips.  So I broke it down to two videos... the 'long version' and 'short version'.  Here we are, the two videos to share with you...

What did I learn from this?? The school I work at ROCKS!! REALLY!!  I buzzed around and saw real education happening.  Yes... it was a 'set up' with the still students... but the activities were not set up at all. Music class had body movement and instruments, Phy Ed had a turkey game that used the whole gym, there was a book fair going on, kids were on Chrome Books, there was calm during indoor recess, I saw robots being programmed, and older groups meeting with their buddies.  There is so much that happens in a school in one day. SO MUCH!! 

Plus the kids were in love with this! It's pop culture, it's their world.  It's a fun challenge.  They will look back and this and say, remember that time?? Yah, that was so 2016. I'm glad that the staff at Hassan were so willing to play this pop culture game yesterday.  It was a lot of fun!