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Chronicle Live
Chronicle Live
National
Sonia Sharma

Uplifting 'lockdown blues' video featuring staff at John Spence Community High School goes viral

It's not how you would usually expect to see teachers at a school - dancing and singing in classrooms.

But this fun-filled video about beating the "lockdown blues" has hit the right note.

The video was made at John Spence Community High School in North Shields and features teachers as well as canteen, cleaning and office staff.

It urges people to "beat these lockdown blues" by wearing "our dancing shoes", and has been seen more than 8,000 times on the school's YouTube channel.

The words and music were put together by Mike Watson, a music teacher who works for North Tyneside Music Education Hub.

He made a list of the most common words and phrases being used in schools during the pandemic, such as quarantine, sanitise, social distance, staggered starts and home learning, and weaved them into the lyrics.

Around 30 staff members from John Spence then sang and recorded their parts individually on video, some from their homes and others from school

.

These were then edited together by Mr Watson, who also features on the video himself playing a number of musical instruments.

He said: "I thought I would write a song based on what the children were feeling. The whole idea was to lift spirits.

"This song is not about the dirge of being in lockdown - it's about hope and wearing your dancing shoes. It's got a clappy beat and you can jump and dance to it.

The video, made at John Spence Community High School in North Shields, features staff members dancing and singing (John Spence Community High School)

"We had no idea how we would make the video because the schools closed when the lockdown was announced and even the staff were feeling disjointed, with some of them in schools and some at home.

"But the staff at John Spence came forward and said they would do this. It was fantastic."

Damien Grazzer, a music teacher at the school, said: "We wanted to do this as a gesture to raise a little smile on people's faces after what's been a difficult half-term for parents and students.

"And it has put a smile on everyone's face. Thousands of people have seen it and liked it.

"We are a community school - community is in the heart of our name. One thing we take pride in is being there for all our students and parents. It's important to let them know we are here.

"Once we put the video out there, within 10 minutes we were getting messages from people saying how much they liked it. We even got a message from someone in Australia. It's been amazing."

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