Longest Week of my Life

You're about to get the full and complete story of Cool Schools, the "camp out" lock in, and everything else that happened during the week of October 26-30th!

Let me start with a couple of back stories so that we're all on the same page! The first one goes all the way back to last year. Steven Hayes, the art teacher and FCA sponsor at school, asked Josh and I to be in a video promoting See You at the Pole. Unfortuantely for Josh, he asked me first and I don't know how to say no! What you need to know about this video is that Josh and I were in homemade Wonder Twin costumes and acting ridiculous! Other teachers were Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman and Aquaman. I have no idea why we were some of the most obscure superheroes from the 70's but that's who they asked us to be and once again, I can't say no! I have heard from others that this is one of the first videos that pops up on youtube when you put Goodpasture in the search.
Next, I need to tell those of you who don't watch Nashville Local News what Cool Schools is. Every Friday morning, Channel 4 in Nashville broadcasts live from a high school in the area. They send Aaron Soloman, one of their broadcasters, to the school from 4:30-7:30 and every 20 mins or so they cut to him live to see what's going on at the school. It's the schools responsibility to have a pep rally, activities and performances going during that time so that you don't look like the most boring school ever! That's right, this means that teachers and students have to get to school at 4;30 in the morning in order to be a part of Cool Schools! We have known that this was coming for most of the school year, what I didn't realize was how crazy that week was going to actually be!
The last thing you need to know is that I had been talking to our principal, Mr. Judd, about getting something from Fools (my upcoming production) on the agenda for Friday so that we could get some free publicity for our show that would be the next weekend. He was trying to work something out but left it at a no promises type answer. When we got the schedule for that Friday pep rally the week before, Fools wasn't on it. I was bummed but I had tried and I wasn't going to push it!

Monday, October 26: I don't really remember much about Monday except that it was Retro Twin day. (All week was our Spirit Week which means every day is a different dress-up day). Retro Twin day means an outfit from any decade as long as someone matches you. So Josh and I decided to wear our Death Cab for Cutie t-shirts and I wore my skinny jeans for the first time. (The t-shirts were our twins part and the fat that Death Cab for Cutie is so last year's band was the retro part!) I think the skinny jeans were a success so it was a big day!

Tuesday, October 27: Tuesday was Hero day! You could dress up like your favorite hero - I didn't have time to put anything creative together because of rehearsals every night so I pulled out my Little Mermaid sweatshirt (lavender Disney sweatshirt in a little girls size with Ariel and Flounder swimming on front) and decided that she would be my hero for the day. We had planned an all-school singing devotional because we would knew Channel 4 would be there to do a little pre-filming so they could start advertising for Friday. So everyone took their hats and masks off before coming into the auditorium and they filmed all the heroes and superheroes singing their hearts out! Precious! So then at the end of Devo Mr. Judd makes an announcement for the cast of Fools to stay behind after devo. At this point I'm a little confused and hoping we're not in trouble because I don't know anything about why he would need to see us. So I come down front after devo and ask what he needed us for. "They want to film a scene from your show and interview you." Seriously? Remember, I am wearing a Little Mermaid sweatshirt, and as far as I know we got bumped off the schedule so my kids are not expecting this at all! But I'm not complaining about the free publicity so I circle my kids up and tell them to get set for Act 2 Scene 1, mostly because that was the scene we had just practiced! While we're working Mr. Judd calls me down to meet Aaron Soloman, local TV personality. He introduces me and Aaron shakes my hand and says "Hey, you're one of the wonder twins!" SERIOUSLY?? Apparently, we had given them some of our past videos to go through and edit and add to the footage and so Aaron had seen our See You At the Pole video. Awesome. He made some crack about how I was nominated for an Oscar for it and I made a witty response about how I'd been waiting for this day my whole life and everyone was laughing so my first conversation with someone semi-famous in Nashville went ok I guess! So then I have to go make sure my cast is doing ok. They are freaking out but they're troopers to they handle it and do really well! After a few minutes of the scene he groups us up on the set and asks some questions and the whole time I'm standing there in my Little Mermaid sweatshirt. Again, awesome. Fortunately, the video they ended up editing and putting together is now online and it turned out pretty cute (look for me, lavender sweatshirt on the end!) I'll include the link to that video at the end of this post!

Wednesday, October 28th: Full Disclosure: I started this post back in October but never finished it! It is now November 23rd and I don't really remember anything specific that happened on Wednesday but I'm sure it was awesome!

Thursday, October 29th: So our awesome principal (seriously, he really is awesome!) has been scheming this whole week trying to come up with a plan for the night before this big Cool Schools event. Since we are trying to encourage all the kids to be there at 4:30 in the morning it seems like we should be able to work out a fun plan to keep all the kids at school all night. Kinda like a lock-in! To most people (Josh included) the word lock-in is terrifying. I LOVE it! I love everything about lock-ins! I pulled so many all-nighters in college I can't even remember them all and that was for lame school stuff! When I get to have lock-ins for fun stuff it's even better! But then they start adding the words camp out. That's when I freak out. I do not camp. At all. Seriously. Not even a little bit. No tents. No sleeping outside. None of that sounds awesome to me. So that's where I start to get a little worried. To make a really long post a little bit shorter, I'll just say that they decided to let the kids bring tents starting at 8:00pm on Thursday night but also left both gyms open (for a boys gym and a girls gym) for people who were not so keen about sleeping outside so I was all for it! I even moved up my rehearsal that night (because yes, in the midst of all of this we've still been having rehearsals every night!) so my cast could be a part of all of it. And it was AWESOME!! I didn't sleep even one bit but it was so fun! We had tents and campfires and smores and games and we showed a movie in the auditorium and it was just so fun to be able to hang out with the kids (and our fellow teachers) in a setting that was so different from the classroom! I played Nertz (a card game) with a group for ahwile and we had playground relays and then towards 2 and 3am we just sat around and laughed at nothing till we cried (or at least I cried - I don't think anybody else did!) The kids did awesome and there were like 8 of us teachers who stayed up the whole night!

Friday, October 30th: At around 3:30 or 4 we started walking around giving wake-up calls for all those who didn't make it through the night and then at 4:30am Channel 4 showed up and we were ready to go! We had a pep rally and a rock paper scissors tournament and the little kids did a dance to the Monster Mash. There was an awesome Science experiment and a middle school dodgeball tournament and just all kinds of us acting crazy for live TV! If you are just really interested (cough*Grandma*cough) you can go to www.wsmv.com and search on the Cool Schools page for Goodpasture and they have some pretty good footage still up of all the Friday morning stuff. I don't think I'm in any of it but it's still pretty awesome. We make it through till 7:30 when Channel 4 wraps it up and starts to leave and then they send all the kids to the cafeteria for breakfast and then after breakfast we are supposed to have class until 11:00. Which means we go through a normal school day and just spend about 30 min in each class instead of an hour and 30 minutes. That part started getting a little rough but we made it through! By the time that last bell rings though I am kind of dying but the day is not over yet because Josh and I have to be at the Title company at noon to close on our house! I still think it's really funny that these two things (cool schools and signing on our first house) will be forever tied together in my mind. We got there a little early and they had these huge couches for us to wait on and I had to go sit at the play table for the kids and start coloring because I was afraid I would be out in 2 seconds if I just sat there on the couch! But we got the papers signed and officially became homeowners and thankfully we have an awesome realtor who loves us helped us out alot and was not frustrated with us for operating on no sleep at all for the past 24+ hours! So overall an awesome, memorable, fabulous week - but definitely the longest week of my life! (in a good way!)


PS Here's the link to the video with my cast in it. It starts out with a commercial for Tennessee Tech but it doesn't last very long and then it gets into the Goodpasture stuff. They showed it during the week as a preview to what would be coming up on Friday. My cast shows up at around 2 min 30 seconds in.

http://www.wsmv.com/video/21476621


-Kaitlyn