McMonagle Elementary principal, Dianne Coplin, told her students it would take them reading 5,000 books during ‘March is Reading’ month to get her to camp out the roof of her school for a whole day – in a Cat in the Hat outfit.
Not missing it for the world, on Tuesday, her students exceeded all expectations, reading a whopping 6,963 books and forcing Coplin outside with a tall aluminium ladder to fulfil her promise.
After students were surveyed on what they'd like to see Coplin do for the challenge -- dressing up like a fairy and delivering treats to school, wrapping her up like a mummy or having the top 10 readers toss pies at her -- the roof stunt won.
Coplin set up a tent with an esky, laptop, mobile phone and a yoga mat. From the roof, Coplin fielded questions from her students below. Not surprisingly, a few of them asked if they could come up on the roof and join her for part of the sunny day.
"Do you think I climbed up here or jumped?" Coplin asked a class of students looking upward, while heading to lunch. "I would have an awesome vertical jump."
However, this “teacher on the roof” challenge wasn’t unique to McMonagle Elementary.
Havens Elementary School Principal, Shelly DuRussel, braved freezing temperatures and camped on the roof of her school overnight.
The achievement of her students? Reading for 2,133 hours during the month of March. That's nearly 89 days -- or nearly three months -- of reading.
"I'm super proud of them,” DuRussel said.
“They had to read for 120,000 minutes. They reached 128,000 minutes."