Video by Fife primary school staff keeps spirits up

Staff from Cardenden’s Denend Primary School have created a special video for pupils and their families this week to help keep spirits up during lockdown.

Well known faces, including staff from across the nursery and school, filmed themselves acting out the lyrics to the song ‘When Will My Life Begin’, from Disney film Tangled, before the video was posted online.

And the end result has been well received by the local community.

Claire Wyatt, headteacher at the school, said: “At Easter we put together a montage of pictures with the staff holding up messages about staying safe and how we were all missing them.

“The families really enjoyed that, so this grew from there.

“It went down really well so we wanted to do something a bit bigger.

“We’d never done a staff video before, but the school I had worked in previously did it.

“So we decided to be brave and put one together to let our families know we are here as a team and we are still here for them all.

“We’re now in the eighth week of this, and for young children that’s a long time.”

The headteacher said all the staff had a lot of fun making the video.

“We all had a laugh when filming it and Mara Sweeney pulled it all together,” she said.

“She hadn’t done it before but spent the weekend learning how to do it.

“So many staff, teachers from the nursery right the way through the school and support assistants wanted to take part.”

And the choice of song which the staff acted along with is important.

Ms Wyatt said: “One of our teachers who is really into music suggested that song and it was just spot on.

“The words are about wanting to get out there and do all these different things and it just seemed to ring so true for us at the moment.

“We know a lot of families will be having a really tough time and worrying about money, each other and keeping safe. It’s hard work thinking about all of that so we hoped this would make them smile.

“We have heard really good feedback from the families so far and it seems to have lifted their spirits.”

So are the Denend Primary team planning on any more videos like this in the future?

“Not so far, but you never know!” laughed Ms Wyatt.

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