Teacher Uses Barney Song to Calmly Lead Class While Gun Battle Rages

Filed under: In The News

"I love you. You love me. Never mind the sound of all that artillery."

While rivals gangs exchanged gunfire outside, Martha Rivera Alanis, a nursery school teacher in Monterrey, Mexico, calmly led her class through the siege -- with a little help from Barney the purple dinosaur.

The scene was captured on video by the teacher herself.

"What, darling?" the teacher tells a student as shots ring out. "No, nothing is going on."

Actually, what's going on is machine gun fire.

"No, nothing is happening," Rivera reassures her students.

She then asks if the kids want to sing a song, and they all cheer, "Yes!"

After they sing the Barney classic "If All the Raindrops," the teacher tells the students to lie on their backs and open their mouths to catch chocolate "raindrops" in their mouths.

The London Daily Mail reports the anonymous teacher is being hailed as a hero throughout the world.

Although none of the children were injured, the Daily Mail reports five people were gunned down just outside the school doors as part of the ongoing gang violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country's powerful drug cartels in 2006.

According to the Mail, gunmen in SUVs pulled up to an unlicensed taxi stand May 27 and opened fire. Six people were killed 24 hours earlier in another suburb.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments