‘Uptown Funk’: A Viral High School Video That Made Bruno Mars Cry [Video]


Every high school needs a teacher like Scot Pankey. Pankey found a creative way to make learning fun and exciting for his students. And the world gets to enjoy the outcome of the special project he assigned to the students at A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School in Dallas, Texas.

Pankey decided to have his students learn an incredibly cool dance routine to the top charting Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ hit song “Uptown Funk.” The video has taken social media by storm acquiring close to 10 million views. Pankey told Fox News he wanted to get his students back in the groove of school once they returned from their holiday winter break.

News Max reports that Pankey heard “Uptown Funk” over Christmas break, and fell in love with the upbeat dance tune. As the school’s director and theater arts teacher, Pankey instantly knew what he wanted his students to shake off the holiday funk of returning to school.

“I love Bruno Mars. We are a project-based school instead of having lectures. I said for our next project I want the students to get ready, and we would need to dance. We are a tech school so to get them up dancing was a feat in itself. I have the best students in the world. I was hoping we would post on YouTube on Sunday, so their parents and friends would see it, and you would maybe 1,000 clicks and instead we have 400,000 in 48 hours.”

And those number have obviously risen tremendously over the course of one week.

The completed five minute video took two weeks of planning, one actual run-through, and one practice take with a camera man being pushed around in a shopping cart through the school to video record the students performing, as per News Max.

Pankey, knowing these are “tech” students and having them pull off a dance video was no small feat, did not leave them hanging high and dry. He put himself in the forefront of the entire video leading them through to the end.

The hip teacher revealed to Fox News that “we have a lot of timid students. They’ve never danced before. I really am not a dancer, and I told them, if you will do this, I will do it with you. I just wanted to have their backs.”

Taking these students out of their comfort zone to create and produce this video was a fabulous idea and helped to develop their team work skills.

Bruno Mars learned about the video and posted on Twitter that it touched him so much that he cried at the end. How many people can say that?

bruno tweet

[Photo Credit: Fox4News.com, Twitter.com]

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