The first thing you see when you walk into Katharine Tornow's classroom is wall-to-wall coverage of handmade Eagles pennants by her students. While this isn't unusual for many Philadelphia classrooms, Tornow is a primary school teacher in Glasgow, Scotland.
Yes, you read that correctly. There is a class full of 11- to 12-year-old Eagles fans in the United Kingdom.
"I had this class when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, so they're really invested in the team," Tornow said. "We decided that we would use the Eagles basically as an interdisciplinary conversation topic for covering math and design and technology and PE and even food technology as well."
Growing up in Scotland with a Scottish father and American mother from Philadelphia, Tornow inherited her Eagles fandom from her mother's side of the family. While she was raised to support all Philadelphia sports teams, the Eagles always stood out – partly because she is Scottish and enjoys one of their nation's pastimes.
"There is a similarity between American football and rugby, and I'm quite a big rugby fan," Tornow said from her classroom in Glasgow. "Even from when my brother and I were very small, we were getting kitted out in all of the (Eagles) T-shirts and jumpers or sweaters, everything from the (United States)."
Tornow brought her love for the Eagles into the classroom at St. Brendan's Primary School. The Scottish students keep track of the Eagles' record on the board behind Tornow's desk. There is a student-crafted banner under the room's clock that spells E-A-G-L-E-S. Tornow even keeps a mini-Eagles helmet on her desk as well as other Eagles merchandise that her cousin sends from Philadelphia. Most importantly of all though, the class watches Eagles highlights every Monday after a game.
Now, her students love the Eagles all the way from Glasgow and it's even being used as a way to facilitate their learning.
"We're trying to really get as much of the children's enjoyment and vested interest in the Eagles into as many different areas of the school curriculum as possible," Tornow said.
"We're using the Eagles as our basis to plan a budget to go to Philadelphia and see a game. Then, they're going to use recyclable materials in order to try and construct as much to scale as possible, a scale model of Lincoln Financial Field. Then, we've got a little enterprise topic where the children are going to design and create little Eagles beaded bracelets and then sell them to the rest of the school to try and raise funds for our end of year trip for our class. ... And then for food technology, we are going to be looking at some of the foods that Philadelphia is noted for and then have a go at recreating them ourselves and have a little Eagles party with the food from Philly."
Even the Eagles Autism Foundation is being used as a tool in the classroom, with Tornow teaching the students about the importance of charity and supporting children with autism.