School portraits / Spring 2019, Washington, DC, as reported over dinner
Maret's Head of School Descended as Marjo Poppins
Every few years, Maret's teachers secretly rehearse a surprise assembly. The 2023 school magazine told the history, from a motorcycle in 1997 to a head of school on a wire, spinning.
In 1997, at the Maret School in Washington, D.C., students were called to an all-school assembly. The head of school, Marjo Talbott, began a talk on fire safety and introduced the city's fire marshal. It was a science teacher, David Walker, in full firefighting gear. Then an engine roared outside, the doors flew open, and the college counselor and the director of buildings and grounds rode across the gym on a motorcycle, in black leather, and the counselor joined a doo-wop group to sing "Leader of the Pack."
That, according to a history of the tradition by former teacher Linda Johnson in the school's Spring 2023 magazine, was the first Faculty Fun Assembly. They happen every few years. They always begin with a big surprise. Walker said the hardest part was not keeping the secret but finding time to rehearse without being discovered.
The second hardest part was getting students into the gym. "We invented many fake reasons for the all-school assemblies," Walker said, "since the kids got better and better at figuring it out." In 2000, students sat down for a presentation on Phase Two of the Master Facilities Plan.
Phase Two of the Master Facilities Plan. I would have walked in with my eyes already closed.
Later assemblies had zombie science teachers dancing to "Monster Mash," a spoof announcing that the Frog mascot was being replaced by the Shark, and in 2017 the math department chair swinging into the gym on a wrecking ball.
And in 2019, Talbott herself appeared as Marjo Poppins, descending from above. The magazine's caption describes her coming down slowly, spinning and kicking, in an "unscripted and hilarious" attempt to face the audience.
A wire is a fine way to arrive. It is no way to steer. Somebody had rehearsed everything except which direction she would be facing.
In 2023 it was a Masked Singer competition, between a Green Dragon, Oscar the Grouch and Mr. Incredible, who were a dean, a department chair and the head nurse.
The faculty kept a secret from hundreds of teenagers for weeks. I cannot keep a birthday present from a seven-year-old until dinner.
This summer my wife and I tried to surprise the children with a weekend away. We invented a fake reason: a dentist appointment. The eldest asked why a dentist would want all three of them on a Saturday. The middle one checked my calendar. The youngest packed a swimsuit. When we told them, nobody was surprised, and everybody was delighted anyway, which, I gather from Maret, is the point.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Maret Magazine, Spring 2023: From Motorcycles to Masked Singers resources.finalsite.net
- Maret welcomes Dennis Bisgaard, November 9, 2023 maret.org
- Maret student life maret.org
- Maret public student reviews niche.com