Administrators spend cold night on middle school roof
Effort just one way to motivate, keep students engaged.
More than WADSWORTH — anything else, Wadsworth Middle School Principal Eric Jackson and Assistant Principal Dave Ryder want to keep their students engaged.
In the past, they’ve planned water balloon fights, pumpkin bowling, pies-inthe-face and giveaways. Their latest effort? Sleeping on the roof of the middle school — in below-freezing weather — as a reward for the school exceeding its goal for its annual canned food drive.
“It’s middle school,” said Jackson, in his sixth year as principal. “We got to keep them on their toes and engaged and wanting to be here and wanting to have fun, and we’re kind of willing to do what it takes.”
Ryder, in his fourth year as assistant principal, said when he and Jackson come up with ideas, “We usually just run with them.”
“We just try to come up with stuff that the kids will like and that will motivate them,” he added.
Each year, the Wadsworth school district hosts a canned food drive, with the items, which were picked up last week, donated to the local Salvation Army to keep them in the community. The middle school also has a “friendly competition” with Highland Middle School in the neighboring Medina County school district each year to see who can collect the most cans.
The last two years, the “Canned Food Trophy” has gone to Highland. Wadsworth wanted to step up its game this year, Ryder said, and this year, the middle school’s goal was set at 10,000 cans.
Jackson said he came up with the idea to sleep on the roof a couple of years ago, and figured it was finally time to offer up that incentive.
Ryder said it was “down to the wire” — near the end of the drive, they were still 6,300 cans short. But one parent wrote a check to get them the rest of the way to the goal, with 10,166 cans collected.
As temperatures remained in the low 30s Tuesday afternoon, Jackson and Ryder started setting up their skyhigh campsite. The setup included a TV, a tent that struggled to stay upright in the windy conditions, cots, sleeping bags, chairs and space heaters.
“All the comforts of home,” said Ryder, who said an electric outlet right next to their tent will allow them to use their appliances and electronics.
“We’re gonna try to stay warm,” added Jackson.
As students were dismissed from school for the day, they gathered in the parking lot to see their principals, who greeted students and high-fived them before heading up to make their grand entrance on the roof.
Getting up there was no easy feat. The principals walked through the cafeteria, down a hallway and up a metal staircase and climbed up a narrow metal ladder out through a gray metal hatch onto the roof, where they were to spend the night. The low Tuesday night was expected to be 22 degrees.
They climbed out of the hatch and waved to the hundreds of students and teachers gathered below, who cheered, waved and took zoomed-in photos of the pair.
“I think it’s really brave of them,” said seventh-grader Anna Wallace, 13.
“They’re really dedicated,” added seventh-grader Emma Watson, 13.
Throughout the evening, the pair were to keep students engaged and involved in the experience from home through Instagram Live, asking for someone to bring them Chipotle for dinner, as the school had a fundraiser there Tuesday night, and for pledges to collect 30 toys in 30 minutes for Toys for Tots.
They also planned to keep busy by watching Christmas movies and YouTube videos.
Jackson and Ryder were to come back down before school starts Wednesday morning and work a full school day.
“It’s all fun,” Jackson said. “Some people are like, are you crazy? You know, you kind of have to be to teach middle school, to work in a middle school.”