Singing to the World--the story behind the song

I work at the Lanai High and Elementary school in Lanai City, Hawaii as an educational assistant with the 4th grade class.  This is my fourth year working there, and I've been lucky enough to follow the same students--1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now fourth grade.  It's like going through school all over again!

Recently, the students have been studying poetry for their Language Arts class, and were asked to all write peace poems as part of a project where they each create a poetry book.    One of the teachers I work with, Sandy Patterson, had previously shown me a video where a teacher wrote a peace song with the students performing the music.  After reading through the students' poems, this sparked the idea in me to do something similar, but this time, have the lyrics be written entirely by the students.  There was a lot of great writing to choose from, and I spent the next day or so compiling all of the most inspiring lines from the students' poems.

I was able to turn their writing into lyrics that would fit into a commonly used song form:
Verse
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus

We wound up with a song called "Singing to the World:"

Singing to the World
music by Matt Glickstein
lyrics by Class of 2020

Verse 1:
Peace is gumdrops and raindrops
Gazing at the stars
Spread all the peace to the world
Like jelly from a glass jar

Verse 2:
Peace is to be a good person
Keeping your dreams alive
Making things a little bit better
Giving your friend a high five!

Chorus:
I see the world in a different way
Everyone coming together
We all see the world in a peaceful way
Just love, only love, to make the world better

Verse 3:
Peace is a world without sickness
With clean land and fresh air
Let's make people smile and happy
With friends and family there

Verse 4:
Peace is having fun
Singing to the world
Everyone is equal
With happy boys and girls

Chorus

Bridge:
Peace is laughter all around
No more tears,  no more frowns
Peace is a dove
The symbol of love
With everyone free
That's what peace means to me

Chorus (2X)

After finalizing the lyrics, I went home and was inspired by a very simple musical instrument, the ukulele.  The other fourth grade teacher I work with, Jerod Savage, teaches ukulele to his fourth grade students every year.  Because I work in his class, I was also motivated to learn the instrument at the same time as the kids.  I've been playing since the beginning of this school year, and I haven't been able to put it down--my wife can attest to that!   I wound up writing the song using only the ukulele (my main instrument is piano).  My thinking was that if I wrote a simple tune that could be sung with just ukulele, that I could teach the kids to not only sing the song, but also accompany themselves.

The students were so enthusiastic about learning the song that I decided it would be neat to record their voices singing instead of mine.  Over the past few weeks, we have recorded the whole class singing, as well as individual students. The instrumentation is ukulele, piano, and the students' voices.   We are also in the process of turning the song into a music video that features the students, the school, and a little bit of Lanai. 

Our goal with the song is to spread our message of peace not only with the island of Lana'i and state of Hawaii, but to the world.

I will be posting updates on this blog as we start the process of creating the video and sending the song/video out to the world!

To listen to the song, you can visit my webpage, or hear it on Soundcloud.

Pictured below are some of the 4th grade students I work with: