At these meetings, which happen daily at around 8:30 a.m., we sing, greet one another, count the days we’ve been in school, and talk. We started our study of birthday songs with a class discussion at morning meeting. I also hoped it would be one of many ways to break Eurocentric norms in my classroom and help my students feel welcome and empowered.

I hoped this project would help children feel excited about celebrating birthdays in school. So a few days after that moment at breakfast with William, I launched a birthday songs curriculum, inviting families to send in lyrics for birthday songs they knew so we could learn about them. I needed to honor these days in ways that were meaningful and relevant for each of my students. In leading children to sing “Happy Birthday to You” at classroom birthday celebrations, I had been privileging my own cultural background over those of my students and their families.įor many children, birthdays matter. Each of my students’ families likely had special birthday traditions. Families who have lived in the United States for generations also celebrate birthdays in various ways. 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. One morning last April, I was with my kindergarten students in our school’s cafeteria.

Happy birthday songs lyrics