Theme Profile: Back to School for One More Day!

Shared from our vault…

Billy Coburn is back with an entertaining yet poignant profile to celebrate this time of year when kids go back to school. Even if your riders aren’t parents, they all share one thing in common…they all went to school, and all likely have some fun, crazy, embarrassing, and poignant memories. And so do you!

Billy says this about how he came up with this profile:

I put this ride together one afternoon while perusing through all of the Facebook feeds showing “Julie or Johnny in their first day of school best”— with their placards in hand announcing what grade they were off to tackle. ICA’s Jennifer Sage had already given us an extensive list of theme music related to Back to School, so I decided to poke some fun and give it a shot. The end result was quite surprising and super fun for not only my riders, but for me as well. Plus, it was an intense workout. I was fortunate; it was raining the day I did this ride, which made for additional great school memory sharing.

While the work is real, as well as real hard, there is also time during the recoveries to poke fun at your students and ask them some of the following questions:

1. Favorite grade you attended?
2. Best subject? Worst subject?
3. Would you repeat your childhood school days?
4. Would you do high school again?
5. Were you ever known as the teacher’s pet?
6. Who was the first boy/girl you “went steady” with? Or kissed? Whatever happened to them?
7. Did you win any awards? Class clown? Most likely to succeed? Best/worst dressed?
8. Or did you have to wear a uniform?
9. Have you gone to any 10-year, 20-year, 30-year high school reunions?

But don’t get too involved in the responses…remember, you’ve got (school) work to do! Warning…you may get stuck after class continuing this fun conversation with your riders. It may be that you all decide to meet up for a cup of coffee to continue to reminisce!

NOTE: Billy uses Mixmeister to blend his tracks and often just uses portions of a song (such as the first half or the last half), so this Spotify playlist as posted is not usable for this profile, it’s just a collection of the songs that he used. It’s the brilliant idea behind this profile and interaction that happens in this ride that makes this so much fun and is why I posted it here on ICA. You will need to add your own music, perhaps just using a few of his song suggestions. Make sure to peruse the ICA Back to School bucket playlist for over 150 song ideas. 

Please share in the comments below if you do this ride, or if it inspires you to create a similar profile. Share your playlist, and of course, share the best antics from your school years that you were brave enough to fess up to your own students!