Teacher Jennifer Eirinberg conjures flash mobs for fundraising – and fun

By Mike Knezovich

Teacher Jennifer Eirinberg conjures flash mobs for fundraising – and fun

Growing up, Jennifer Eirinberg ’11 ed had one goal: to become a Broadway actress. “That was my dream,” she says. “Nobody was going to stop me.” There was just one problem: “I was super-untalented. But I thought I was the best.”

Her parents didn’t tell her otherwise. “They allowed me to continue because I loved it. Thank goodness.” Today, a whole lot of people she’s touched in her young life would say the same.

Thank goodness.

Eirinberg isn’t on Broadway – but she does perform. As an elementary school teacher in Round Lake, she blends rhyme and song with school lessons to engage her fourth-graders. Her innovative Dance ’N’ Donate classes mix good fun with good causes. A flash mob she organized last summer gave onlookers a thrill while raising funds for youth services in greater Chicago.

The constant has been dancing. She started with classical ballet training when she was 3; she added jazz in middle school and, later, hip-hop. In high school, she was a member of the dance troupe. One summer, she worked at a youth camp and discovered her other passion: “I fell in love with working with kids, so by my junior year I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

Next stop: the University of Illinois, where she focused first on academics (“I’m not a naturally bright girl, but I work really, really hard”) and then on dancing. Having taken dance classes at the Campus Recreation Center, she got the idea to rent space there and teach her own classes to her Sigma Delta Tau sorority sisters. The classes were a hit, and she organized and taught them for the rest of her undergraduate years – with a charitable twist.

Attendees paid a minimal fee – usually $1 for an hourlong session – and were asked to choose charities to benefit from the fees. These “Dance ’N’ Donate” sessions would draw as many as 60 students.

Fast-forward to 2012, when Eirinberg graduated and undertook a vigorous job search. She missed leading her Dance ’N’ Donate classes, and her father noticed. “My dad is super-cool and said, ‘Jen why don’t you do a flash mob?’” She thought they were “dorky” but then saw a flash mob on TV. That did it.

With proceeds earmarked for the nonprofit her father heads – Youth Services of Glenview/Northbrook – Eirinberg called on her UI network, her summer camp network and her dance network to assemble the various players. She lined up a shopping center in Skokie as the venue. And on July 31, shoppers got a 3-minute surprise performance to “Party Rock Anthem,” and Glenview/Northbrook Youth Services netted nearly $1,000.

Having also landed a fourth-grade teaching job at Round Lake, Eirinberg hit the ground running. Under her direction, a flash mob of 50 teachers at the school surprised an assembly of 600 K-8 students. She started an intramural hip-hop dance club. And she teaches a dance class to staff.

Eirinberg also regularly uses her performance skills to make learning fun in her classroom – a technique she learned as a student teacher at the U of I. Tina Cowsert, the cooperating teacher who supervised Eirinberg at Carrie Busey School in Champaign, regularly uses music, movement and rhyme in her instruction. Cowsert says that Eirinberg was “driven, motivated and very energetic. She walked right in, saw things that needed to be done and she did them.” Eirinberg took to Cowsert’s style, even dressing up as a stalk of broccoli during a campaign to encourage healthy eating.

Says Cowsert, who is regularly in touch with her former student, “She took a lot of what I do and ran with it. I get ideas from her now.”

Knezovich ’79 media, ms ’01 media, is a freelance writer in Chicago.

Enjoy Eirinberg’s flash mob at Westview Old Orchard Shopping Center – a 3-minute surprise performance on July 31 that netted nearly $1,000 for Youth Services of Glenview/Northbrook.

Here the teachers of Round Lake Elementary surprise and delight their students at a school assembly.