NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — In a high school English class, one teacher knows it’s high time for what makes him as successful as Shakespeare.
At Ben Franklin High School, Greg Swanson had a hands-on punctuation mark.
His style.
His signature.
He gave high fives to everybody.
Students.
Teachers.
All in the hall.
Then COVID comes along to give a thumbs down to his signature signal.
WGNO’s Bill Wood has the story of how students down the hall came along to save the day.
And the signature signal.
The kids who came to save the day are not in English class, they’re in the Engineering class.
They knew they had to do something.
So they did.
With plastic pipes, trips of wood and duct tape, they made their mission a reality.
They are engineers, after all.
So they did some, well, engineering.
They created the High-Five-Inator.
It’s a contraption powered by the power of your foot.
Your foot presses the foot pedal on the High Five-Inator.
That causes an arm and a hand attached to the machine to rise up to meet you.
And greet you.
And give you a high five.
And if it happens twice, that would make it a high ten.
When the pandemic put a New Orleans teacher in a predicament, students came along to save the day.
And they saved his signature move.
They did it by simply giving him, a hand.