Teacher dyes hair to encourage reading goals

You’ll know her when you see her – and it’s not because she’s walking down the halls of Inkom Elementary School with light-up running shoes, but because she’ll have the hair to match her bright pink and green pants.

D’Lyn Moser-Armstrong needed to encourage her students to meet their reading goals somehow.

“In the past, we’ve hyad movies and popcorn, outside games, and even water balloon fights,” Moser-Armstrong said. “But this time, I took it to the extreme.”

For the first time in her nearly three-decades as a teacher, she made one bold bet with the students – if they met their reading goals for the year, she would dye her hair any color they choose.

“I just thought, ‘what in the world can I do so that I can encourage these kids?’ So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what – why don’t I dye my hair and let you pick the colors?’ And then I went, ‘what was I thinking?!’ And you can’t promise them something and not carry it through.”

She said, some of the students were losing steam by the end of the year, while others had zero pages of their Accelerated Reading goals under their belt.

That was three weeks ago.

What she threw down on the table, ended up working. In those three weeks, the students were able to meet their goals – some, exceeded them.

On Monday morning, Moser-Armstrong kept her promise and had her daughter come to class and dye her hair in front of the class.

Stella Schoonmaker said having Moser-Armstrong as a teacher makes learning fun again and said she never had a teacher who did anything similar to what she just witnessed.

“It was just hilarious,” Schoonmaker said. “I was just laughing so hard!”

Moser-Armstrong said there’s a bigger lesson, here.

“My philosophy on education is – if they could just love being here, you can’t stop their learning.”

She said the best results are when teachers come to class and do what they can to make learning fun. She added, that’s when you see students wanting to be at school and wanting to learn.