SPOKANE, Wash. — Teachers and administrators at Finch Elementary in Spokane came up with a unique way to encourage their students to complete an online math program.
If all 422 students completed five lessons a week over 10 weeks, Finch Office Manager Kathy Fiorillo agreed to kiss a pig. The kids completed a combined 21,100 minutes of lessons, so Fiorillo fulfilled her promise. Principal Shane O’Doherty said it all started as a joke when they were coming up with a way to do some team-building.
“While trying to think of something fun for reaching the goal, I made the joke about our office manager, Kathy Fiorillo, kissing a pig,” he said. “Well that just kind of stuck and the kids thought it was loads of fun. Luckily, Kathy is a great sport and was willing to do it.”
At the time, only kindergarten through second graders were in the building but O’Doherty said classrooms would invite Fiorillo to their meetings and joke about it with her. The students drew pictures, made up songs and brought in pig paraphernalia.
“It was even a frequent Valentine art project about Kathy and the pig with hearts and kisses,” O’Doherty said. “This week we finally made our goal, two weeks early, and the classroom burst into cheers when we announced it."
On Friday, O’Doherty and Fiorillo headed to a farm in Deer Park owned by sixth grade teacher Stevie Dezellem, who has a 300-pound pet pig named Lucky P. They recorded the moment and show it to the students on Monday.
PHOTOS: Lucky P the pig and his farm friends
Fiorillo said prior to the kiss she watched a video of a woman kissing a pig an she later had a nightmare about it. She said she was nervous but when the time came she knelt down and smooched Lucky P.
"They're wonderful and they worked really hard and kissing a pig is all I had to do and they did all the hard work," she said.
The students completed a digital adaptive math program called DreamBox. Spokane Public Schools Elementary Math Coordinator Tricia Gessele said they use the program to help support individual needs of students and to help support math learning. She said the blended digital learning approach has been very successful.
According to Gessele, several schools in the district are doing weekly school wide or classroom-based contests like this to encourage students to complete their math lessons.