Today we had an assembly featuring a candidate for president who is good buddies with the person for whom our school is named. When our principal was informed that this visit would occur, complete with the full contingent of press, we kicked into gear and did a massive school-wide refresher of bulletin boards, wall-stuff, flower planting, etc. It was rather inconvenient and time-consuming and annoying to go through all this to be a photo-op, but we did it and the whole event was very nice. Our students behaved well, the questions they asked at the Q&A were pertinent, and the stroll through the halls with the reporters and entourage was very nice, blah, blah.
We had a performance by a group of second graders of the song "Yankee-Doodle Dandy" while they wore darling little three corner hats that were very red/white/blue and then they did a round dance to a recorded instrumental of "Yankee-Doodle Dandy."
When we returned to our fourth grade class-room several of my students were exclaiming with disgust "Why did they sing that stupid Barney song??" HUH? BARNEY SONG? I asked one of my more obnoxious girls to explain to me WHAT Barney song. She hummed "Yankee Doodle".
WHAT? BARNEY?
So we spent a few minutes while Mrs. Teacher explained that maybe Barney borrowed the tune, but that was no Barney song. We learned about its 200+ year history and the Continental soldiers who seized onto the British ridicule and made it their Revolutionary Pride Song.
Whew--the things I don't know they don't know. Wow.
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