The staff and faculty at Francis Lewis High School are showing that Taylor Swift is not the only one who can “Shake It Off.”
What started off as a joke between teachers on a Friday morning has become a YouTube video garnering more than 5,000 hits in less than 24 hours.
In the video, the faculty of the high school located at 58-20 Utopia Pkwy. in Fresh Meadows is shown “shaking off” the stress of a long week of regents exams and snow by dancing to Taylor Swift’s hit “Shake It Off.”
“We had a little bit of a break and we are very big in school spirit and we thought it would be a great idea,” said Christina O’Connell, a teacher and coordinator for student activities at the school. “We thought it would be fun for the teachers to collaborate and spread school spirit.”
The video was recorded on Jan. 30 and was thought up after O’Connell and fellow faculty members saw a video of a teacher in Texas dancing to “Uptown Funk” with students.
They spread the idea to others in the building and even got an assistant principal to star in the beginning of the video. Teacher Marci Contino scouted the layout of the building and gave faculty direction as they moved around the school.
“As teachers in the middle of the year we feel a lot of stress, with the winter and especially the snow that week. So ‘shake it off’ seemed like an appropriate theme,” O’Connell added. “I think it brought us together as a faculty.”
The music video, later edited by Isai Serrano, the head of the virtual enterprise program at the school, features staff and faculty of the high school and the boys’ step team, Nu Gamma Psi.
O’Connell said that she initially had posted the video on YouTube Wednesday to be able to share it among teachers and staff, but when she woke up Thursday she found out that the video was blowing up online.
Students were surprised, saying they “didn’t know our teachers could dance,” and have even asked when they would be able to star in a video with their fellow classmates and teachers.
“School spirit is something that should be shared by everyone in the building and we thought this would be a good way to show it,” O’Connell said.
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