There are numerous teachers and students in the building who have their own hobbies that they enjoy. American studies teacher Shane McBurney has a growing collection of presidential bobbleheads in his classroom.

McBurney started teaching in 2012-2013. Most of the bobbleheads are presidents, but McBurney has a few that are important to American history such as Rosie the Riveter and the Statue of Liberty. His first bobblehead was Andrew Jackson. 

“I was shopping on Amazon for whatever reason and it was suggesting an Andrew Jackson bobblehead … so I’m like ‘hey that looks kind of cool.’ So being that I was a history teacher, I bought it. I think it was only $20 at the time. Andrew Jackson started it all,” McBurney said. 

McBurney acquired some of his other bobbleheads through gifts. 

“It turned into, ‘so I have Andrew Jackson’ and then my parents had absolutely no idea what to buy me for Christmas that year, so they bought me another president. And it seems that every year I kept adding to the collection, like I would get bobbleheads as gifts. So it just became a thing,” McBurney said. 

Although all of the bobbleheads are important and special to McBurney, the Andrew Jackson bobblehead has a very interesting story to him. 

“I had maybe two bobbleheads at the time, it was very early on in my first year teaching. I was in the middle of class, and I had happened to look up where I had my bobbleheads. I noticed that Andrew Jackson went missing. There was a little post-it note there that said, ‘Went to the battle of New Orleans, will return,’ … But I went home and later on in that day, I got a friend request on Facebook. Someone created a Facebook page for Andrew Jackson’s bobblehead. … Long story short I kept on getting pictures of Andrew Jackson’s bobblehead hanging out with some Barbies. There were [also] pictures of him hanging out with Bruce the Buckeye from Ohio State, [and] that’s what crossed the line, he would never, never be caught dead hanging out with the Ohio State Buckeyes. I found out who it was, we all had a laugh, and I guess that was like a story to tell,” McBurney said. 

McBurney believes his  bobbleheads are an iconic point of walking into his classroom. According to him, without the bobbles, there’s no McBurney.

“I think they’re really cool because whenever you’re having a bad day sometimes you look over at them, they make you laugh,” sophomore Saqarra Gordon said.