The story of Mr O’s circle

Are you the sort of teacher who likes to tell stories in the classroom? This is the fascinating story of Alexander Overwijk – a mathematics teachers from Ottawa. For almost ten years, "Mr O" told his students that he was the world freehand circle drawing champion. But then, in 2007, things almost got out of control. The post is in 5 short parts.

Part one: 1999

Once upon a time, there was a mathematics teacher called Mr O.

Mr O was the kind of teacher who liked to tell stories and his students loved him for it.

One day in 1999, during a geometry lesson, Mr O had to draw a circle on the blackboard. Now, on any normal day, he would have used a compass to do so. But on that day in 1999, he was feeling lazy. He decided to draw the circle freehand.

One of his students remarked, “Wow, sir. That is a pretty good circle.”

Mr O stepped back to look at his work. The student was right. The circle was pretty good. In fact, it was almost perfect.

As quick as a flash, Mr O replied, “Of course it is good. I am the world freehand circle drawing champion.”

That got his students’ attention.

“Is that true Mr O? Are you really the world freehand circle drawing champion?”

“Absolutely!”

“Tell us more!”

Mr O improvised a story. The students loved it. It spread from class to class. And very soon, a school legend was born – the legend of Mr O, the world freehand circle drawing champion.

From that day onwards, Mr O would often stay behind at the end of each school day to practise drawing freehand circles on the board. After all, he never knew when his students would ask him to demonstrate his skill.

Part two: 2006

Seven years later, one of Mr O’s students brought a camcorder into class.

Camcorder

“Mr O. Can I film you drawing a freehand circle?”

No one had ever filmed Mr O doing demonstrating his skill before.

“Of course you can”, he replied.

The student pointed the camera at Mr O and started to record.

This was in the days before smart phones and no one had ever filmed Mr O before.

“Of course you can”, he said.

The student pointed the camera at Mr O and started to record.

“Why don’t you tell us the story?” said the student with the video camera.

“OK, I’ll tell you the story. This is something that I used to do in my spare time. I used to draw freehand circles. And then one day I discovered that there is an annual world championship held in Las Vegas. In 1997 I entered and I won. And now, as a previous winner, I automatically get invited back every year.”

Mr O stopped talking. He picked up a piece of chalk and stood tall beside the board. He took a deep breath. And then he drew a circle.

Incredibly, the circle was one of the best that he had ever drawn. And it was caught on camera. The video was posted onto the school website and it was very popular with students, parents and other teachers.

A few weeks later, the video found its way onto a new website that had just been introduced to the world. The name of the website was YouTube and the video quickly went viral.

As a result of the video, Mr O’s fame went national. He received phone calls from journalists and invitations to appear on radio and TV shows.

For the first time ever, Mr O was starting to lose control of his story.

Part three: 2007

The first time I saw the video, it had already been viewed over 7 million times. And I am being 100% honest when I say that I was slightly sceptical about the authenticity of Mr O’s story.

It’s not that I am a particularly distrustful person. It’s not that I’m good at spotting a liar. It was more a case of seeing myself in Mr O. As a teacher myself, I have always loved telling stories to my own students. In other words, it takes one to know one.

So was Mr O telling the truth or not? Was he really the world freehand circle drawing champion? Did such an event actually exist?

I Googled: “World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship”

My search took me to another video on YouTube. It was titled: World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship.

In the video, pairs of individuals competed against each other with board and chalk. It was a knockout competition.

And in the final, I recognised one of the contestants. It was Mr O. He went head to head against – of all people – a ring maker!

And the winner was, of course, Mr O. I felt bad about doubting him.

Part four: 2016

In 2016, I was writing a book titled Videotelling: YouTube Stories for the Classroom. One of the stories was titled “A World Champion” and it was based on Mr O’s viral video.

In order to write my story, I needed to get permission to publish a transcript of Mr O’s words. I got in touch with him through his school website. He immediately replied and kindly gave me permission to refer to his video.

We chatted a bit about the video. I confessed that, as a teacher myself, I had been suspicious of his story but had changed my mind when I saw the actual World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship on YouTube.

And then Me O told me a secret.

He admitted to me that he had created the World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship video himself. He had organised the event in order to keep his story alive. He had hired a venue, advertised for contestants, found judges, and arranged for the event to be filmed and uploaded onto YouTube. The plan had worked perfectly.

Part five: A true story about a fake story

So that’s it – a true story about a fake story. Mr O’s real name is Alexander Overwijk. He’s a mathematics teacher from Ottawa. And the story that I have told is pretty much the way things happened, except that it is no longer a secret – Alexander has written about his experience on his own blog.

Click here to read Alexander Overwijk’s blog post.

His story was also featured on the front page of his local newspaper.

Alexander is – in his words – a teacher with a passion for engaging students in learning through storytelling. 

In a profession increasingly dominated by aims, objectives and outcomes, how can we put into words the value of what Alexander did?

Here are a few personal thoughts:

1. Storytelling fosters community

I am going to guess that Alexander’s story became a kind of in-joke between himself and his students – something that would come up every now and again and raise smiles as well as sceptical eyebrows.

All teachers need to foster community in the classroom. Storytelling is a great way for doing so.

2. Story creates context

Alexander’s story was genuinely useful at times. In response to questions from his curious students, he was required to invent a fictitious device called the ‘circleometer’ – a tool that competition judges use to measure freehand circles.

Understanding how the circleometer works requires some solid understanding of geometry. And Alexander would dedicate a whole lesson to this.

Similarly, language teachers can use story to simulate communicative contexts and make language and tasks more meaningful and memorable.

3. Student curiosity and engagement

Alexander’s story was born out of questions from his students. So, although it was initiated and managed by the teacher, it was always interactive and engaging. Alexander may have been at the centre of the story, but this was not a teacher-centred dynamic.

4. Story and language are inseparable

Although Alexander is a mathematics teacher, I could imagine using his approach in the language classroom. Language teachers need to immerse students in meaningful language and also provide them with opportunities to communicate among themselves and with the teacher. His story certainly made that possible.

In June 2021, Alexander joined us for a guest webinar in the LessonStream Membership. It was an honour to meet you Mr O!

To find our more about the LessonStream Membership, click below.

Jamie Keddie

Jamie Keddie

Jamie Keddie is a Barcelona-based teacher trainer and storyteller. He is the author of 'Images' (Oxford University Press, 2008), 'Bringing online video into the classroom' (Oxford University Press, 2014) and 'Videotelling: YouTube Stories for the Classroom' (LessonStream Books, 2017).

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