BY NANCY KIDD

What do you do …  when you’ve been hired to teach 10- to 16-year-olds with a wide range of backgrounds and abilities at a juvenile detention center?

• When you don’t know until you walk in how many students you’ll have based on who was arrested or brought from court since the day before?
• When none of them are happy to be where they are? When they appear lethargic and unmotivated—likely focused on their own personal, serious situations?
• When you feel yourself being dragged down by indifference and hopelessness yet you realize you truly enjoy being with these kids?

I found myself in this situation shortly after I started teaching full time at detention, and the truth is, I had no clue what to do to make things better.

Soon, however, I realized a captive audience—or “captured audience,” if you will—had some benefits. The students might not like the activities I had planned, but if they wanted to be out of their rooms and with other people, they complied with my requests.

I had been grasping at straws, trying to spark some life into the group when, for no real reason, I decided to introduce “The Birdie Song.” The children’s song includes hand motions, and I somehow convinced the students it was a great way to start the morning.

I told them it would help us all wake up, get moving, and feel energized for the day.

I told them someday they might have children—some already did—and that it was important to interact with them by reading to them and singing with them. I told them this could be one song for their parental toolbox. (Some promised to do just that while others swore they never would because they wanted no reminders of detention.)

Silly but safe

I said singing the song was an invitation to let loose and have a little fun. I told them I knew they might feel uneasy doing something they considered so babyish. Even so, I asked them to try, to show me they had the courage to get out of their comfort zones, and to know that in doing so, they would be OK.

I wanted them to understand that they were in a safe place.

Amazingly, they followed my lead, and we sang “The Birdie Song” that morning and every morning thereafter. Some days singing it once was enough. The kids came in, alert and ready to get to work. They sang with gusto and, sometimes, even with smiles on their faces. Other days did not start off as smoothly. They might be sleepy and slow-moving. Someone might be in a foul mood or pouting over some issue unrelated to school.

When that was the case, we sang the song multiple times until the mood and energy level improved.

Sometimes the students volunteered to lead the singing, and when they did, they tended to hold the group to a tougher standard than I did.

Silly as it may seem, it did what I had hoped it would do. It injected some pep into the classroom, and it helped connect us all.

One day a student shared why he enjoyed the song. He said, “I’m glad we do ‘The Birdie Song’ because sometimes when new kids come in, they think they’re ‘all that.’ Singing this song puts us all on the same level.”

Detention revelation

Whoa! His profound observation was spot-on—“The Birdie Song” had become detention’s powerful equalizer!

Although I never intended it to become a tradition, it did. As kids and time came and went, “The Birdie Song” eventually “made it to the streets.”

Occasionally, new students would come in knowing the song and quite prepared to perform it. They had learned it from a family member or friend, and they seemed to consider it a natural rite of passage—no big deal!

Then one day, while shopping with one of my sons, we stopped for a snack at the food court. We stepped up to place our order, and a pleasant young woman behind the counter greeted us.

She said, “You look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”

Because of confidentiality concerns, I never acknowledged my students first in public. More often than not, however, I didn’t recognize them outside the facility in street clothes.

We saw so many kids over the years, and sometimes their stays weren’t long enough to leave a lasting impression, especially if they were quiet and well-behaved. When we have them, they are not allowed to wear makeup or jewelry. It doesn’t matter if they have a brand new piercing—all earrings and studs are removed and stored with their personal belongings. Because there were few hair styling products and no blow dryers, their detention hairstyles may look drastically different than when they are on the outside.

In detention, all the kids are dressed similarly in cotton uniforms—drab navy or green elastic-waisted pants and v-necked pullover short-sleeved shirts. Even their shoes are detention-issued canvas slip-ons.

No wonder I often struggled to recognize them on the outside.

The young woman persisted. “I KNOW I know you from somewhere. Where do you work?”

“Well, I teach at the juvenile detention center,” I replied quietly.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed and began flapping her wings (arms) and singing “The Birdie Song.” She didn’t stop until she had sung the whole thing. She followed her performance by telling me she hadn’t been in trouble in three years and that she taught her daughter to sing “The Birdie Song.”

My son, a young teen, stood by my side, taking in this unlikely scene.

Arm-flapping legacy

As we picked up our food and turned to leave, it dawned on me how often former students reminded me of their experiences with this song.

“The Birdie Song” was my desperate response to the plaguing questions above and in my heart. At best, I considered it a stop-gap solution, a way to make it through a few more days.

How could I have known something so simple would accomplish so much good?

Our sometimes off-key voices bridged giant gaps. We laughed and connected, setting aside our fears and doubts well beyond the last note of the tune. And kids at their lowest often used the song to reach heights they might not have imagined in the classroom.

How could any of us have known that while these little birdies might not remember the social studies, math and English lessons we taught, many do—some nearly a quarter of a century later—remember how our morning ritual made them feel. They remember they felt energized, happy and equal.