Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 9, 2006 RAISING THE ROOF ON READING

Any takers out there?

From the New York Daily News...

Survives frigid evening on roof after losing wager with students

BY ADAM NICHOLS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Clutching a cup of coffee in his shivering hands, school Principal Scott Davies tried to thaw his body after his students banished him to the roof on the coldest night of the year.

"I knew it would be cold. But I didn't know it would be that cold," Davies said after coming down yesterday morning.

The head of Harrington Park School in New Jersey had promised to do whatever the school's 700 students wished if they read 10,000 books in a year. The kids rushed through the books in four months, just in time for the onset of winter, and banished him to the roof for a night.

Equipped with a tent, sleeping bag, thermal underwear and a flask of hot chocolate, the 40-year-old principal - hardened from a previous teaching job in Montana, where the winters were brutal - bedded down after school's close Thursday.

Snow flurries swirled in the icy wind around Davies as temperatures plummeted into the low 20s.

"It was cold, but I survived it," he said. "The night actually passed pretty quickly. The students and their families kept coming by to wish me well up until midnight, and then again from 5 a.m. That helped me get through it.

"I think I actually managed to get about three hours' sleep."

To make Davies' night even harder to bear, the students shaved the school's "HP" logo into his hair and dyed it blue.

"I know I'll be shaving that out straight away," he said.

"But the students were so excited by the whole thing and, if it encourages them to read, then I would do it all again.

"Just not tonight."