WESTBROOK – If last year’s staff fundraiser at Westbrook High School was modeled on TV’s “Dancing With the Stars,” this year’s event is more like “America’s Got Talent.”
Next week, the high school is bringing back for the third year what has become a tradition to raise money for the senior class, while also giving teachers a chance to show a side of themselves the kids don’t usually get to see.
“It’s kind of fun to see what the teachers do outside of school,” said Gabby Ledue, senior class president and one of the coordinators of the event.
Last year, staff members paired off in couples for a fundraiser, “Dancing With the Staff,” which raised money through ticket sales and concessions.
But this time, according to Peter Wilson, a teacher at the Westbrook Regional Vocational Center and one of the event’s coordinators, fewer people were interested in dancing for charity.
“There were only four couples this year,” he said.
So organizers decided to expand it into a talent show, renaming it “Teachers Got Talent,” and that brought people out of the woodwork. According to Ledue, there are about nine acts planned so far, with a total of about 15 staffers, some of whom will be taking part in multiple performances.
One of them will be Tim Eisenhart, a math teacher at the high school. Last year, he participated in the dancing competition with colleague Jess White, who teaches world studies at the school.
“She can dance, so she carried me,” Eisenhart joked this week.
They came in second, losing out by only six votes, but this year, Eisenhart plans to do a lot more than dance. He will be appearing in three of the event’s acts, playing acoustic guitar, singing karaoke, and appearing in a dance event that he declined to discuss in detail, saying only, “It’s kind of a surprise.”
Eisenhart said he will be playing guitar together with Mark Ettinger, a custodian at Prides Corner Elementary School. Much of the music they will be playing, Eisenhart said, will be original pieces, which he described as “folksy country,” but he said there will be some familiar pieces, too.
“We’re going to pick up the crowd a little with (Neil Diamond’s) ‘Sweet Caroline,’ and a couple of popular ones,” he said.
Ledue said all proceeds from the event will go toward the senior class. In the past, the dancing event has generated between $8,000 and $11,000, she said, but that was for a two-day event, and this year’s competition will only be on one night, Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center.
“We’re hoping to bring in a couple thousand dollars,” she said.
Eisenhart said the staffers will have a lot of fun, and bragging rights are clearly at stake, but there is an instructive element here, too. Creative thinking, he said, leads to better problem-solving skills, and he hopes that the teachers in next week’s event will serve as good examples.
“We try to get the kids outside the box, and stretch their comfort zones as much as possible, and we can’t do that if we don’t want to do it ourselves,” he said.
Westbrook High School teachers Brian Flynn, Jessica White, Tim
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