On Friday, May 6th, the entire staff of Forest Trail Elementary made MAGIC when they recorded a lipdub to Katy Perry's "Firework!" It started out as "just something fun to do for students" but quickly morphed into the most unifying experience a school community could ever imagine.
In the last few weeks of school, teachers and staff members are typically tired, cranky and stressed. Students typically exhibit more challenging behaviors, and it is generally an exhausting time of year for everyone involved in public education. This year we carry the added weight of budget cuts at the state level that are forcing us to loose many fabulous staff members who are integral to the functioning of our school. As you can imagine, these last few weeks of May had the potential to be really, well, depressing.
Due to a recent project at Forest Trail Elementary, however, that was not the case at all! Teachers initiated the concept of having all staff members perform for students at the final assembly of the year. We selected the song "Firework" by Katy Perry because it has such an uplifting message and because we knew that her songs are popular among the students. After being inspired by the talented students at Magnolia High School who also created a lipdub to this song, we decided we would follow their lead, but we would end our performance with a live flashmob for the students at our assembly.
Using Katy Perry's song "Firework" to create our lipdub and surprise performance of our flashmob COMPLETELY changed morale on our campus! The lyrics to the song are so inspirational and listening to it over and over was so uplifting to our staff. The Forest Trail staff brought so much positive energy and creativity to this project that the students couldn't help but respond! We showed the video and performed for students at an assembly on Friday May 20th and since then, that is literally ALL our school community can talk about! Parents, over and over have teared up as they talked about how special this was and how in awe of the staff they are. Families have reported watching the draft of our final video that was on our school website nearly 100 times. In school, we literally had NO behavioral issues during the last week of school either! We are generally blessed with really good kids at Forest Trail, but that is just absolutely unheard of in the last week of school!!!
The only thing my principal and I can attribute these changes to is this project, which we have called "Project Firework." This project lit a spark that turned into an eternal flame among our school community. It is very exciting to be a part of it - it really feels like a once in a lifetime experience.
We have had so many requests from students, parents and community members to have public access to our project that we cleaned it up and posted it on YouTube. I am so proud of what our staff accomplished that I had to post it here, too. I hope it brings a smile to your face!
Here is the link to what we have called a "lipdub-flashmob mash-up":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAbEBBTVLsI
Story submitted by:
Julia Fortman
Assistant Principal
Forest Trail Elementary, Eanes ISD
http://fte.eanesisd.net/
