*ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 12, 2020*

My students this year definitely have personality. I can have fun with them and joke with them during the school day. One child didn’t quite seem his normal upbeat self today. So, when I started asking the class to name their feelings this morning, he said “sad.” I asked him if he knew what was making him feel sad and he stated that he missed spending time with his dad. We had a class discussion about how we are all allowed to feel what we feel and no one can tell you NOT to feel a certain way. But what we CAN do for each other is help each other cope with uncomfortable feelings.

I told them about a song that I enjoy by a band that I really like. Ok, ok, I don’t just really like them….I guess you may call it more of an obsession since I have seen them live in concert 64 times in the last 22 years in 2 countries and 8 different states. It’s more than the music for me…it’s the friendships that I’ve made with some amazing individuals from all over. They are my what we call “Jamily.” Anyway, I could have a whole different blog page on this topic, so I’ll save you from me rambling on about this.

Today’s Song: Dave Matthews Band – “Everyday”

I explained to the children that in the music video they will see a man walking around all over town and going up to people, but the people just walk away and dismiss him. But then eventually people start responding to him. I asked them to pay attention to the words of the song to try to figure out what he was asking of the people. About halfway through the video, they knew that he was asking for hugs. I asked them WHY he was asking TOTAL STRANGERS for a hug? Their responses were beautiful:

“Maybe he was feeling sad and just wanted to be loved.”
“Maybe he wanted other people to be loved.”

On top of their beautiful responses, one child even made the connection to a book that I read to them back in September “All You Need Is Love” by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Illustrated by Marc Rosenthal. They realized that the songs were very similar with the same message. We should spread love and we want to receive love.

As I mentioned in my past posts, this pandemic is doing a number on all of our emotions. Some of us just want to be hugged and give hugs! So, on top of discussing our feelings, understanding our feelings, watching and discussing the music video and lyrics, I improvised a bit to help this child out with his feelings EVEN MORE (if you don’t know this by now, “go big or go home” is part of my classroom teaching philosophy). We all traced our hands and colored them bright, cheerful colors and designed them however we wished. Then I had them cut them out and I taped them on rulers. We were then all about to give each other “distant hugs” and “germ free high fives.” They LOVED it! They are so excited to use these every day in school! Oh, and the child who was feeling “sad?” Not sad anymore. Positive energy, good music with a good message, and showing that we love each other can help us all cope with our feelings and emotions.

High fives and hugs:

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Showing off our creative hands:

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Miss Inferrera’s Creative Hands:

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🎵”All you need is…what you want is…all you need is lovvvvvvvve….”🎵 – Dave Matthews Band