Whittier Middle School principal dresses as a chicken as part of reading challenge

POLAND — Anyone driving by the entrance to Poland Regional High School/Bruce M. Whittier Middle School on the afternoon of June 21, may have wondered why a big yellow chicken was waving to the cars and buses pulling out of the parking lot at the end of the school day.
That “chicken” was Shawn Vincent, principal of Whittier Middle School, who donned the costume as part of a reading challenge to the students.

Each year, the Poland Regional High School/Whittier Middle School library conducts a middle school reading challenge. If the middle school students — comprised of grades 7 and 8 — can read a collective total of at least 1,500 books during the school year, they can choose something crazy for their principal to do. In past years, he has been duct-taped to a wall, dyed his hair purple and shaved it into a Mohawk, taken a pie in the face, been dunked in an icy dunk tank, and been covered with dozens of cans of silly string, to name just a few.
This year, he surprised the middle school students –reading 2,281 books — by appearing for morning announcements in a chicken suit and doing the chicken dance. He then visited each classroom to find an “egg” each Roundtable advisor group had hidden somewhere in the room. There were a total of 17 eggs to find throughout the day. At the end of the day, the chicken stood out by the road and waved goodbye to all middle and high school students and to anyone else who happened to be driving by.
Stay tuned to see what happens next year!