Temperatures got down to 17 degrees with flurries the night of Thursday, Jan. 16. Oxford Middle School teachers Jason Cady and Josh “Smokey” Smokovitz relished every minute of it from the school’s roof.
They spent the night up there because they lost a bet. They promised their advisory classes if they raised the most money during the school’s Penny Wars fun-draiser for the American Cancer Society last month, they would spend a night on the roof in January. That motivated their students enough to bring in $1,757.55, winning first place.
Altogether the school raised $7,510.14 in four days. OMS has raised $36,000 for charities in the last five years.
“We challenged our students and they came through,” Cady said. “Not just our students, but all of Oxford Middle School’s.”
Cady and Smokovitz bundled up and climbed the hidden stairs to the roof to make final preparations at about 7 p.m. Safety barriers fenced off the edge, plywood covered the icy rooftop, power cords fed into a command center set up on a folding table and work lights illuminated the scene.
“It’s a total team effort from our building supervisors and maintenance crew that helped set this up and make it safe for us. We appreciate that.” Cady said.
Despite some technical difficulties, they began livestreaming on YouTube shortly after 8 p.m., connecting to the internet through a hotspot on Smokey’s phone. They livestreamed for 10 hours.
They called it “Roof 2.0.” This is the second year in a row they’ve pulled this stunt. Last year their advisory classes raised almost $1,900 for suicide prevention. That video has 125,000 views on YouTube.
“Through these livestreams,” Smokovitz said, “it’s been pretty amazing the outreach from a global impact. You know here at Oxford we say, ‘the globe is our campus.’ I think last year’s livestream stopped counting at 85 countries that checked in.” This year was no exception. States from Delaware to Oregon, and countries such as Australia and the Netherlands commented in the live chatroom.
“We’re not up here to promote Mr. Cady and I,” Smokovitz said in the video. “We’re here to be the voice of all of our student body and just help showcase and celebrate the generosity of our students, our staff and our community.”
It wasn’t just the middle school, he explained. “We had elementary buildings raising money; we had high school students and staff raising money; we had parents driving by donating change out of their door handles. We had bus drivers donating money at bus stops and along the way. I think it would be hard to find anybody who hasn’t been affected by cancer. So Mr. Cady and I are proud to sit up here.”
“It really is going to make a lot of difference in people’s lives,” Cady said. “$8,000 dollars is a ton. ACS uses it wisely.”
Cady and Smokovitz used the opportunity to continue raising money. By Friday morning, they raised nearly an additional $1,000.
To keep them company and pass the time, special guests visited throughout the night. Family, friends, school administrators and teachers from all over the district stopped by to play games and share talents with the online audience. Others brought care packages of snacks, hot drinks, and pizza, hoisted up a milk crate pulley system.
The two teachers pitched a tent just in case, but they didn’t sleep. “We planned on it last year,” Cady said, “but we just never did. So this year it has turned into an all-night kind of thing. We’re going to try to muscle through and stay awake for the whole thing. And this cold weather helps because it would be tough to fall asleep.”
Both had a full day of work on Friday. They waited over the entrance to greet students with a megaphone as they arrived for the last day of the semester Friday morning.