Bob Burt, an Oak Forest, Illinois, high school English teacher told his class of seniors they could earn extra credit if they participated in Get Naked Day. After a strong reprimand and some ugliness from parents (some of the boys told their parents, apparently not realizing they might have been able to pocket $100 each by telling the principal), Burt said he intended the remark as a joke, a humorous way to get the kids interested in an upcoming assignation assignment. Tom McCullagh, one of the students who complained about Get Naked Day, said that Burt knew “our hormones are raging and we want to see each other naked anyway.” He said Burt offered to put paper over the windows so no one could look in, that the Day would be their secret. “Everything we did basically involved sex or sexual connotations.” (Daily Southtown)
[A]n internal investigation found that Burt proposed Get Naked Day as a way to get students in the class to wear loose-fitting clothes and shoes that would be easy to take off and put back on. Burt planned to have his students paint and write with their toes, like the artist profiled in “My Left Foot,” and wanted to make sure that their shoes could easily be removed and pants pulled up to avoid getting dirty.