It was about 9:30 on the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving.

Standing on the hill in front of the school, the entire student body of Goochland Elementary School was peering intently down Route 6 toward the courthouse.

So what were the students waiting for?

The first glimpse of their principal, Dianna Gordon, on the back of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, that’s what.

Principals are always promising to kiss pot-bellied pigs, take a pie in the face and all manner of other stunts to reward students for reaching special goals.

Gordon had promised to zoom into school on a motorcycle if 90 percent of her students would participate in No TV Week, a project thought up by reading intervention specialist Jennifer Casteel.

The idea was for students to turn off the TV for a week and spend more time reading.

“Reading at least 20 minutes a day increases your success in the classroom,” said Casteel.

“Everybody was on board,” she said. Students had just celebrated National Children’s Book Week. The PTA did a book drive to collect books for distribution around the county.

Casteel asked the other GES teachers to promote the idea. Students wrote announcements and read them over the intercom.

More than 90 percent signed up.

Even in the age of the computer, Casteel said there is something special about handling and reading a real honest to goodness book, printed on paper.

“I think the experience of holding and opening a book is valuable,” she said.

No TV Week rules were pretty strict.

No TV. No videos or DVDs. Computer use for only 30 minutes a day. No X-Box or video games. Watching a movie with the family at a theater was okay.

Just to be on the safe side, there was an “escape clause,” said Casteel. Students were allowed to watch 30 minutes of PBS or other news programming each day, but that was it.

Students had to pledge to abide by the rules and their parents had to sign a pledge form along with the student.

And sure enough, just slightly after 9:30, a throaty roar was heard as Gordon rolled down Route 6 past the school, on the back of a Harley piloted by Goochland Restaurant owner Tommy Tayor.

Clad in a Harley Davidson leather jacket borrowed from Glen Worrell and leather slacks Gordon and Taylor zoomed around the circle in front of GES and then took a trip up to Goochland High School.

Somewhere along the way Gordon lost her snazzy looking shades, and the sissy bar fell off the back of the cycle, but she made it back to GES okay.

It was only her second time on a motorcycle. “Years from now I’ll remember this,” she said.

No doubt her students will too and perhaps some of the books they read during No TV Week.

Photo by Ken Odor
GES students watch principal Dianna Gordon as she rides by on the back of Tommy Taylor’s Harley Davidson motorcycle.