Teacher gets the sweetest thing

By Paul Dunlop
U2 IS one band Sarah Cain just can’t live without.
And thanks to the ingenuity of her students, the Pakenham school teacher will soon be getting her heart’s desire — seeing the famous Irish rockers live.
When Mrs Cain learnt her idols were touring Australia next year, she set herself to win tickets in a competition on a Melbourne radio station.
Unfortunately for her, so did thousands of other fans.
After days striving in vain to be the lucky caller, Mrs Cain was about to give up.
Then she remembered her secret weapon.
“I’m a massive U2 fan and I’d been trying to get tickets but, having no luck, I said to the kids ‘Do you think you could help me come up with another idea?’”
Mrs Cain’s entreaty sparked a day of inspired ideas and productivity in the grade two, three, and four class that she teaches at St Patrick’s Primary School.
The children’s hard work led to a package arriving on the doorstep of Nova 100. It was a veritable ‘greatest hits’ collection of reasons why their muchloved teacher should get to see Bono and the lads in action.
“There was a letter from the class, they’d changed the words to the song ‘Desire’ to fit in with why I wanted to win. They’d made up U2 tickets, posters, backstage pass, all sorts of things,” Mrs Cain said.
“All up, there were about 15 items, it was just fantastic.”
Mrs Cain’s bid was the talk of the school and so there was jubilation last Thursday when she received a surprise call from radio presenters ‘Hughesy, Kate and Dave’ on the radio station’s breakfast show.
Two tickets to the concert at Telstra Dome next March were on their way.
Mrs Cain said she was “shaking and crying” when told her class’s hard work had paid off.
“I was over the moon, it was just unreal,” she said.
The music of U2 has been the soundtrack to many of the biggest moments in Mrs Cain’s life, including her wedding last year.