Many of my students’ families have roots in countries around the world, many of which of course have special birthday songs and traditions. About two-thirds of the class is bilingual or have family members who are, and about two-thirds of my class are students of color. My students are culturally and linguistically diverse. As I read the lyrics, a few students sang along. Toward the end of the book, she has a birthday party with her family and they sing “Las Mañanitas,” a traditional Mexican birthday song. Then I remembered another moment earlier in the year, when I was reading aloud Alma Flor Ada’s I love Saturdays y domingos, a children’s book about a girl who speaks English and Spanish. But seeing William happily sing the “Stevie Wonder version,” as we came to call this song, made me wonder if he wanted to celebrate his birthday in after-school partly because the birthday song they sang there - the way they celebrated his life and achievements over the last six years - felt the most happy and meaningful for him. Family members would often visit and share photos of the birthday child as the child was growing up. At first I was puzzled why not with us, with whom he spends six hours a day? Children seemed to like our birthday celebrations. I remembered earlier in the year that William’s mom told me her son didn’t want to celebrate his birthday at school - only in after-school. That interaction at breakfast stayed with me for days. Later, he told me he wanted to sing this song to me for my birthday. “Thank you for telling me!” William finished eating breakfast. When I was growing up, that was the birthday song my white, English-speaking family sang it was what I knew. It sounded joyous - more joyous than the staid birthday song I had led children in singing every time we celebrated a student’s birthday: “Happy Birthday to You,” written by sisters Patty and Mildred Hill in the early 1900s. Of course, this isn’t a generic birthday song, it’s a happy birthday song for Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that his birthday should be a national holiday. Later, I learned it was “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder. The song was familiar, but I couldn’t remember who wrote it. “ Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthdaaaaaay - happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthdaaaaaay!” they sang, smiling and clapping to the beat. A student named William remembered this information and turning away from his bagel with cream cheese, he said, “Kerry, we sing a different birthday song in our after-school.” He began singing it and two of his after-school classmates, Derrick and Fatima, joined in. We often talk about birthdays in class, and in one of our discussions I shared that my birthday was coming up - a way to help us bond over a shared experience (“I have a birthday, too!”). and the kids were eating cereal and bagels before we went upstairs to the classroom. I work with a paraprofessional named Vesna, who was also at the table. I teach kindergarten and 1st grade - looping, with the same class for two years - at Central Park East 2, a public school in East Harlem, New York. It might have a perfect meaning for wedding season, or for your boyfriend, girlfriend, children or graduation.One morning last April, I was with my kindergarten students in our school’s cafeteria. But it doesn’t mean once that single’s over, the song’s dead. “When there’s a new single, we want to support it. “We are enabling billions of users to be the music supervisor for their life story,” Facebook’s global head of label partnerships Perry Bashkoff told Billboard in April, noting that the new music functions had the potential to help extend the life of a song far beyond its initial release date. Licensed music was supported across the company’s platforms beginning in April 2018, with new in-app music tools following soon thereafter. The push began in December 2017, when Facebook reached a deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) for both recordings and publishing, with the other majors and indies following. A sticker featuring the artist and song will then appear on the video.īirthday Stories is part of a larger recent push by the social media giant to allow users to incorporate licensed music into personal videos and other user-generated content (UGC) across its online properties, which include Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp and Oculus VR. Once that’s done, they can simply search “birthday” for a list of celebratory songs. Once their photos or videos are captured, users can add birthday songs to their Facebook Stories by selecting the “Music” sticker.
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