School House, Coming Through!

School buses are common sights across the U of A’s campuses, however a golf cart sized school bus with a glitter “Stop” sign can only be described as “rare.” It’s even less likely that you would see a school house following close behind. But on September 23, 2016, that is exactly what anyone walking across the U of A’s North Campus would have seen. We asked the administrative team in the departments of Elementary and Secondary Education how and why it happened.

Why a school house/school bus combo?

Kateryna: It was probably the least ridiculous idea that we came up with [for the Green and Gold Day Parade].

Vanessa: Yeah, that’s fair.

Sara: We knew we wanted a golf cart — like that was the big thing. So, it was between a golf cart or animals. Like a little horse. When we settled on the golf cart — [we asked] “how are we going to make the golf cart work?” And then we were just like, “ah, we could make a school bus!” and because we’re Education, it just kind of went from there.

Cris: Like the schoolhouse thing was — like we had in our heads that the 75th anniversary of Education was approaching, so having the old country schoolhouse/church — I’m that’s usually what they were, if you ever watched Little House on the Prairie.

How did it come together?

Cris: It would have been the night before…

[Collective laughter]

Sara: Cris did most of the building.

Cris: Most of the framework.

Sara: And you did most that on your own time…

Cris: The pre-fab at home. And then Vanessa, Sara, and myself unloaded — took it off the truck and then assembled it in one of our rooms.

Vanessa: And then had to disassemble it [starts to laugh] to get it out of the room [laughs]. The scale was just [laughs] it was a surprise.

Cris: That’s right.

Sara: And I think that most of the time spent was on the school house…? So we had probably about — I’d say two nights before, we were in one of our classrooms, like sponge painting.

Vanessa: Intensely.

Sara: In shifts. We had a pizza party one night. And then, because we couldn’t get the golf cart until the day of -

Vanessa: No, night before -

Sara: Right, night before — oh, I should have remembered that [laughs]- so we were frantically trying to get the golf cart. We were working on it right up until the last minute -

Vanessa: Yeah, you and I were in the hall -

Sara: — trying to assemble things.

Vanessa: But the school bus was ready so we zoomed over just to get our spot — because Andy [Grabia, U of A Social Media Manager] was telling us that we would be disqualified [laughs] if we didn’t get there [laughs some more]. And then, yeah, the school house joined us after the parade had already started.

Were there any other hiccups?

Kateryna: Well that morning, I remember I was still cutting out the letters for the “Stop” sign.

Sara: Because we put that on your desk the night before… also, sorry

Vanessa: [Gasps] We felt so badly…

Sara: — we didn’t realize -

Cris: Oh yeah, the glitter!

Kateryna: So much glitter…

Cris: She was cutting with glitter paper and she has a glitter phobia…sorry.

[Everyone laughs.]

Kateryna: It’s the herpes of arts and crafts! It’s semi-permanent, it’s awful, and just uhhggg.

Vanessa: And we did not know this.

Sara: — we didn’t know that she had this [phobia] and so, we were all “Kat can do this!”

Cris: And she was too nice to not -

Vanessa: So we had just left it there on her desk…

Sara: It was just waiting there for her… first thing in the morning. [Laughs] We had thought “Kat’s got a matt and knife, and so she can cut out the letters perfectly” [giggles].

Vanessa: And she did! It was a beautiful stop sign.

Sara: She powered through her phobia.

[The group chuckles together.]

Any other surprises?

Cris: Sara went into a character which I’m thrilled to see her talk about.

Vanessa: Oh, yeah! Oh, it was amazing.

Cris: It was a school marm.

Kateryna [to Sara]: I did not recognize you when you first came walking down the hall to where I was, and I was like “who’s this?”

Vanessa: Yup, and she has her B.Ed, so… she comes by the teacher voice honestly.

Sara: Yeah, and my major was Drama, so, ya know, I could slip into character just like that.

Cris: And she had a ruler — sorry to jump in — but it was spectacular! And she was terrifying students.

Vanessa: Oh, really? And, Andy!

Cris: And Andy.

Vanessa: She yelled at Andy to get back to class, and he started packing up, before he realized again that he’s not a student [giggles].

Kateryna: A lot of people did that! I remember that you yelled to this one student “stop looking at your phone and get to class” and they were like “okay” and turned around quickly and walked away.

Cris: But, I think we could have entered you alone

Vanessa: We could have, actually.

Cris: And we could have still come home with the trophy.

Kateryna: That, or Audrey.

[Audrey was part of last year’s team. She’s since moved on to join Risk Management Services.]

Sara: Oh, yes…

Vanessa: [laughs] I was just looking through those pictures this morning…

Kateryna: She was the one with the costume that we didn’t all fully understand at the beginning.

Sara: But it made so much sense after.

Kateryna: It did. It became clear later. With her “you forgot your lunch!”

Cris: She was dressed in every shade of green and gold imaginable, and she was a mother running with her son’s lunch after the school bus. “You forgot your lunch! You forgot your lunch!”

Kateryna: I just remember that she had that bag, which was filled with candy, that she would every so often just start throwing at people. And people did not realize that that was what she was doing.

And finally, how do you feel about winning last year’s Green and Gold Cup?

Cris: Winning wasn’t really a focus. We just wanted to wow the parade.

Vanessa: And we didn’t know that there would be a trophy. That was awesome! Getting that trophy was so great.

Cris: It really was. To have something that we really put effort into, and to have something that would commemorate the event.

Vanessa: And it was proudly displayed for as long as we possibly could.

Cris: When there was murmurs, mumblings, murmurs, grumblings of people saying “oh, you could have had it with just the bus” we were like “ahh, we could have saved the school for another year!”

Vanessa Grabia, Assistant Chair (Administration), Elementary Education and Secondary Education, Sara Napp, HR and Operations Assistant, Elementary and Secondary Education, Kateryna Barnes, Communications and Web, Elementary and Secondary Education, Kevin Gordon, Web Content Developer, Elementary and Secondary Education, Cris Ryder, Student Programs Assistant, Elementary and Secondary Education, Rick Eng, Science Lab Coordinator for Elementary & Secondary, Erika Therriault, Undergraduate Program Administrator for Elementary, Antonella Scaccia-DeWitt, Graduate Program Administrator for Elementary, and Audrey Whitehead (formerly of Elementary and Secondary Education) were members of the creative team that won the 2016 Green and Gold Cup.