Schools
'Dunk the Principal' Tradition Continues at Shamrock School (VIDEO)
Tuesday's Field Day also featured multicultural themes.
Even on field day, he came to school in long pants, a blue long-sleeved shirt and a tie.
That’s how he went into the dunk tank.
And got soaked.
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To the fifth graders’ delight.
Principal Wayne Clark sat on the hot seat Tuesday morning or, more accurately, the wet seat, for one class during his school’s field day. The day’s activities included a multicultural program focused this year on Africa, with drumming and dancing inside led by Joh Camara.
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Outside, the dunk tank took center stage, especially with Clark as the target.
“Who wants to see someone in a bathing suit get dunked?” Clark asked before he climbed into the tank, dressed for the office.
Fifth-grader Joe Siverhus led the “Dunk the Principal” line. Siverhus felt confident he could throw a ball to hit the target that would tip Clark’s seat and dunk him. Not quite. Each of his classmates took a throw.
Clark egged them on, verbally and sometimes with a squirt of water.
“If you dunk me, you go back to kindergarten,” he joked with the students who were practically salivating to dunk him into what he said was warm but not clear water.
Dunk him they did.
The school has gotten a dunk tank for field day for three years, Clark explained, and school gym teacher Lee Ann Hatch asked Clark to take a turn, he said, as the target for the fifth-graders. Hatch asked Clark to “sit in” because she thought “kids would have a blast dunking their principal.” Now, she said, it’s become a school tradition.
“They can’t wait to get him into the tank,” she said.
For the second year, the Shamrock School has incorporated a multicultural theme into its field day, according to Hatch. Michaela Kerns, an English Language Learner teacher at the school, started a multicultural club there during the prior school year, Hatch said. At field day last year, different grades represented countries that compete in the Olympics, she said. This year, the school focused on Africa, with every grade a different African country. Parent Karen Burton recommended Joh Camara after seeing him perform. He got students moving, dancing.
Outside, the first of five other Shamrock staff had followed Clark’s footsteps into the dunk tank: a physical therapist and four special education paraprofessionals. Each of them knows the students in the particular grade who were lobbing balls at the dunk tank target, Hatch said.
A dripping Clark had climbed out of the tank and was heading inside the school to change into dry clothes. No word on whether his wardrobe was wash and wear.
