Which high school teacher would assign his students the Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars can’t-stop-dancing-to-it “Uptown Funk?”
Don’t think fictional “Glee” choir director Will Schuester. And no, not the leader of an admission-by-audition school like the one that inspired the 1980 movie “Fame” and a subsequent television show.
It’s the joyous Scot Pankey, a real-life theater teacher at A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School in Dallas.
“I heard the song before Christmas and fell in love with it,” Pankey told the Dallas Morning News.
“We are a project-based school — there are only two in the Metroplex — and that means you give the students a project, put them in teams, and they have to come up with solutions. They had three weeks to work on it, then present as a group what they learned.”
The YouTube video has gone viral, seen more than three million times since its January 24 release.
Pankey promised to join in the fun if his six different theater classes would let him. (Of course, they said yes.)
Attention Hollywood cinematographers: Student council vice president Bryan Urraca and senior class president Johan Cruz shot the video in a single take.
The teens impressed one key player: Bruno Mars himself, who said he cried when he saw the video.