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Armour School's Morning Show Inspires Students To Have Good Attendance

By Ed Komenda | November 3, 2015 6:48am | Updated on November 3, 2015 1:25pm
 Students at Armour School celebrate winning a trophy for the week's best attendance.
Students at Armour School celebrate winning a trophy for the week's best attendance.
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Kelly Wingate

BRIDGEPORT — Every week, a championship game unfolds among the children of Philip D. Armour School.

No, this game doesn’t involve skills with a mitt or football or hockey stick.

The rules are simple: Show up to class. At the end of the week, the grade with the best attendance wins.

The prize? “The highest attendance gets a trophy,” said Shelley Cordova, Armour’s principal. “Every week, the trophy goes around.”

What makes a classroom’s win even more sweet is the shout-out delivered on the school’s Friday morning Public Service Announcement — a fun talk-show-style broadcast hosted by Armour teachers Kelly Wingate and Kelly Dorn.

And what began as a silly way to lighten up a Friday afternoon in an elementary school packed with weekend-conscious kids eventually turned into reliable attendance booster.

This time last year, Armour classrooms carried an average attendance rate of 96 percent. Today, that rate is 97 percent. In the short time since Wingate and Dorn launched the public service announcements, the campaign has seemed to spark some change.

For much of the school year, Armour’s sixth-grade class has struggled with attendance. Motivated by the announcements and trophies, the class rebounded the week of Halloween and took home the trophy.

The show airs at 12:45 p.m. Fridays. That’s when students get to watch a costume-clad Wingate and Dorn — the Halloween show featured the teachers in Captain America getups — practice math flash cards and talk about subjects like hygiene, allergies and leadership in an entertaining way.

“It reminds us about important things, which is good, because I know we have a lot of things in our heads,” said Lynda Ochoa, 12.

Cordova said the show takes the serious edge off important topics that might otherwise be boring to students.

“I think the biggest thing is you’re not hounding the kids,” Cordova said. “There’s not all these rules. They make it more positive."

The campaign began near the start of the school year, when the Armour staff had to teach students about the new rules that came with the new lockers installed in the hallway.

“Instead of just coming down and saying ‘A-B-C-D, this is what you cannot cannot cannot do,’ we tried to put a little fun spin on it,” said Dorn, who has been teaching at Armour for two years.

The duo keep notes during the week, writing down subjects that could make for a good public service announcement.

One week, students were rough-housing during recess. Bingo: An announcement about playground safety. On another week, a student forgot his lunch, prompting a talk about food allergies.

When it comes down to filming the show in Wingate’s office, there’s no script. The hosts have a post-in note marked with bullet points and they riff off one another.

“The teaching background helps,” Wingate said. “It’s a lot of thinking on your feet.”

The show often features a special guest, a segment students look forward to.

“It’s really funny when you have the special guests,” said 8-year-old Hannah Smith, “because it’s like, “Who is it, who is it, who is it?’”

But more than the student body's enjoyment, the progress on the school's improving attendance has motivated Wingate and Dorn to keep the show entertaining to inspire students into the classroom every morning.

“We think about it all week long,” Wingate said.

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