Watch now: Mattoon assistant principal gets haircut by students | Education

MATTOON — Riddle Elementary School Assistant Principal Jordan Rahar started the school day Friday with shoulder length locks and ended it with buzz cut thanks to a haircut from six of his students.

Rahar offered earlier this spring to let a group of students cut his hair if the entire student body achieved at least 5,000 of their self-set academic and behavioral objectives in Riddle’s Wildly Important Goals (WIGS) program before the end of the semester. The youths there ended up meeting 5,303 of their goals, as tracked by a scoreboard in the front hallway.

“This is all because of the goals you have accomplished each and every week,” Rahar said via a megaphone to the assembled students as he sat down for his scheduled haircut at one of the school’s playgrounds.

Teachers picked a consistent goal achieving student from each of Riddle’s six grade levels, kindergarten-sixth, to help cut Rahar’s hair with assistance from Shear Bliss Salon stylist Lori Croft. The selected student stylists were Ezra Bell, Jordyn Cole, Kalin Davies, Fletcher Houser, Harper Krost and Tyler McKee.

“I am still in shock I got called. Out of all the fourth-graders, I got called,” Ezra Bell said after getting to use scissors to cut off one of the four pig tails that Rahar had tied for the occasion. Ezra and his classmates also got to use an electric razor for the hair cut. “It was fun.”

Dozens of students chanted “shave it off” as they sat on the playground and eagerly watched Rahar’s get hair that he had been growing since March 2020 cut. He planned to donate his clipped pig tails to Locks of Love, a nonprofit charity that provides custom-made hair prosthetics to disadvantaged children up to the age of 21 who have suffered hair loss as a result of medical conditions.

Both Jordyn Cole, a third grader, and Harper, Krost, a second grader, said they were a little nervous about cutting their assistant principal’s hair in front of so many of their classmates but still had fun. Harper, who likes Rahar’s new short hairdo, said she had never before used an electric razor.

“I thought it was pretty cool. I am surprised he said ‘yes’ to it,” Jordyn said with a laugh.

Riddle academic instructional coach Nikki Renshaw said the students considered several possible motivational incentives, including a teacher dunk tank, for this year’s WIGS goal achievement program before choosing the hair cut for Rahar.

“We always let them vote on what their incentive is going to be and that is what they picked,” Renshaw said.