CAMDEN — The kids were told they were going to a school spirit assembly on a Friday mid-morning. Only a little white lie had been built in, given that it was National Fitness Day, which would explain why all the teachers were wearing exercise clothes in school.

Suddenly, as about 20 teachers from Camden-Rockport Middle School came out on the auditorium floor wearing T-shirts with the words “Got Nice?’ on the front, Bruno Mars’ popular dance hit Uptown Funk came blaring through the speakers and just like that — a typical assembly was transformed as the teachers broke out into a coordinated group dance.

Anyone who has checked social media over the weekend has probably seen this video of the C-RMS teachers dancing — a video that now has more than 27,000 views on Facebook. [Note: due to Facebook’s copyright laws regarding the song, it can’t be embedded into this story, but you can see the entire thing without even having a Facebook account by clicking here.]

C-RMS School Nurse Kristin Nelson said she wanted to shake things up for the “Schooner Assembly” on Friday, March 20.

“In the past we’ve done a few staff wellness activities like yoga, but it hasn’t really been well attended,” she said. “So, I was thinking, it would be fun to do something the staff could do that the kids would enjoy and I suggested we all do a dance to the Uptown Funk song.”

The staff seemed very receptive to her idea so she called Kea Tesseyman, a local dance instructor, producer, director and choreographer, to help them.

“Kristin called me in December and asked if I could teach a really cool hip hop dance with her staff,” said Tesseyman. ”So she chose the Uptown Funk song, which I already happened to be using in my own instruction.”

The group of teachers trained once a week for two and a half months prior to the performance. “We’d practice at High Mountain Hall after school and we didn’t want to give it away to kids so in school we called it ‘yoga class,’” said Nelson.  “So, if we were in the hallways talking about it, it would be like: ‘Wink, wink, are you going to yoga this afternoon?’”

“Everybody definitely had a different level of dance experience and for some people it was a real stretch and they had to work really hard,” said Nelson. “It helped a lot of teachers understand what it’s like for students to have to work really hard to do something and still maybe not be great at it. The teachers who had to work hard went to extra practice sessions. We sent videos of the dance steps that they could practice at home.”

Even something that was set up as a lark, still had its challenges.

“We wanted to show them that it’s OK to put yourself out there, be goofy, make mistakes, have a little fun,” said Nelson.

“They were really dedicated,” said Tesseyman. “They came in with incredible energy. They were out of their comfort zone, learning moves just like students. What it confirmed to me is what a fantastic staff we have in our school.”

The day of the assembly, students shuffled into the auditorium thinking this would just be another assembly, no big deal, but the teachers were frazzled.

“We were really nervous, really jittery about it,” said Nelson.

Tesseyman’s 11-year-old son, Adrian, a student at C-RMS, was also deliberately kept in the dark. “We had to keep it a secret, so when he saw me at the assembly and the music came on, he ran down from the bleachers and said, ‘Mom, did you do this?’”

You can see from the video that some kids watching the dance were still in a “not sure what is happening” mode while others were on their feet cheering and dancing along. “We definitely had a high going on,” said Nelson. “We felt great about it and loved the reaction from the kids. But, also, it was such a great team building activity for us. I think it came at a really good time, because a lot of us were feeling defeated after the middle school vote didn’t go our way in addition to being in this mid-winter slump. It really helped us get out of that.”

The student reaction to the event then spilled out into the hallways after the assembly. “We got a lot of high fives,” said Nelson. “Kids were coming up to us and saying, ‘I didn’t know you knew how to do that.’ I don’t think kids realize teachers are people too and like to dance, and laugh and have fun, just like them.”

When Tesseyman produces her Power Performance shows, she works to not only ramp up the dancers’ self-confidence, but also to use their mastery of skills to transform an audience. She knew that some of the teachers were taking more of a risk than others to get up there in front of a middle school audience and were afraid of being judged if they didn’t get all of the steps right.

She said, “They were having the same experience all new dancers have, feeling jittery, worrying how it would come off. I was sitting on the sidelines, watching all of the teachers go through all of the moves we’d practiced, and getting this full-body ‘YES.’ I felt really proud of all of them.”

Tesseyman, who was sitting in the audience with the kids, added, “You could tell clearly, by their faces, they already loved their teachers. This whole thing just made me feel, what a great community to live in.’”

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com