I have often commented on the affect of winter weather on school assemblies. Well this week has been a brute! Throughout large parts of the midwest school assemblies have been shut down due to schools closing. Northwestern Ohio and Northern Indiana were hit earlier this week with bad morning ice, causing countless schools to close and countless school assemblies to be rescheduled.
Tom Johnson, our amazing Mime and great presenter of Thomas Edison was “iced” out at several schools, as were several of our science show performers. Now we have heavy snow falling in Kentucky and Southern Indiana, so schools are closing there. We have even had schools calling and changing their scheduled programs for tomorrow before the closure has even been called.
Poor Fred Priebe, one of the wonderful gentlemen who perform our Living Lincoln program had the worst misfortune of all this week. All week he was just in the wrong place. Fred (who, by the way,is a great Abraham Lincoln impersonator!) was scheduled to start his week in Northern Indiana and work his way south all week. So he caught the ice in the north early in the week and drove south into the snow, losing school assembly dates all along the way. I think he managed to have two of his school assembly dates actually play this week. Originally he was scheduled in seven schools! Even his planned schools for tomorrow have already rescheduled due to anticipated snow.
Performers love coming to your school but often must brave trying weather conditions to get to you. It is a rewarding life, performing educational school assemblies for kids, but it can be frustrating and challenging to say the least.
If you are scheduled for a program and it turns out that Old Man Winter pulls the rug out from under you (or buries you under a rug of snow!) the only thing we would ask is to please be considerate and try to get in touch with your presenter or their representative as soon as possible to reschedule. Please reward these gallant road warriors by taking the time to get them set up for a “return engagement”.
Geoff Beauchamp is the Regional Manager of Mobile Ed Productions where "Education Through Entertainment" has been the guiding principal since 1979. Mobile Ed Productions produces and markets quality educational school assembly programs in the fields of science, history, writing, astronomy, natural science, mathematics, character issues and a variety of other curriculum based areas. In addition, Mr. Beauchamp is a professional actor with 30 years of experience in film, television and on stage. He created and still performs occasionally in Mobile Ed's THE LIVING LINCOLN