On Friday, May 9th, 2014, the +William Davies Middle School performed its first annual Lip Dub to Pharrell Williams song, Happy!
It was amazing! On the day of the lip dub, students and staff had so much school spirit! Everyone was dressed in school colors, (red and black), decorated the hallways with balloons and streamers, painted posters, and most importantly, worked together to get the job done.
From Monday, 5/5 through Thursday, 5/8, all middle school students were required to take the NJASK test. Although students knew about the lib dup, there were no signs posted anywhere in the school about it. The school was in "testing" mode.
However, on Friday 5/9, the entire school tone changed. Students were motivated to decorate the hallways with streamers, posters and balloons. Staff contributed in the lip dub by decorating, having their students create posters, (some even used a theme), and playing the Happy song in their classrooms so the students could memorize the words. Beth Steinen, a 6th grade Social Studies teacher, had her students create posters with the word 'happy' in different languages. Another teacher created a wild wild west theme for her students. Teachers took selfies of their students and posted it to social media using the #WeAreDavies. Everyone supported one another to make this day a success. It was truly amazing and a sense of pride!
+Meghan Fitzgerald came up with the idea so she led the crusade. She had her 8th grade LMT students brainstorm the route of the lip dub on both the 1st and 2nd floors. She assigned locations in the route for all the teachers and their students. She had to make sure the timing of the song was correct so the students who were lip syncing came out during their part of the song. This took a lot of practice and planning. Most importantly, she had to make sure all students were allowed and had permission to participate in the lip dub because it was being filmed and will be posted to the +William Davies YouTube channel.
+Leanna Mullen of FilmReel Productions was responsible of filming the entire lip dub. Her and Meghan coordinated together to figure out how to break up the filming in the route. Both 1st and 2nd floors had two takes, meaning it had to be filmed twice, incase of a mishap. My role was the music. I had to make sure the students were able to hear the song while walking the hallways. A portable CD player boom box, "old technology", was used to play the music. Basically, I held it over my head, played it loud, and just followed behind Leanna. Meghan, followed behind us to help coach the students and keep them on pace during the taping. The school resource officer, Art Fadden, was behind us recording the event on his iphone, while Stephanie Wroniuk, a Vice Principal, was rallying the students. Here is a glance of a behind the scene video taken by Kevin Morrison, a Vice Principal.
The lip dub ended in the gym where all of the 8th grade students waited anxiously to see the unveiling of Dagor, our school mascot. They were surprised to see their school Principal, Mr. +Stephen Santilli was Dagor!
+Leanna Mullen will now work her magic and put together a video for the lip dub. The video will be reviewed by Lead Learner, +Stephen Santilli for approval. Once it is approved, I will post it to the William Davies You Tube channel.
It was truly amazing to see everyone, students, staff and administrators, work together for a common cause. We are truly a school family! We as educators, the Davies staff, modeled the 4 C's to our students: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. We modeled to our students by implementing this concept, a project can be successful and the possibilities are endless! WE ARE DAVIES!