Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2009 / Students say 'Hello' to new archbishop in a podcast
Students say 'Hello' to new archbishop in a podcast
by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 20, 2009
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Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic
Singer/ songwriter Laszlo Slomovits leads fourth-graders at St. Raphael School in Garden City in singing his song, "Hello," as they prepare a podcast to send to Archbishop Allen Vigneron. |
Garden City — Fourth-graders at St. Raphael School wanted to welcome Archbishop Allen Vigneron in song, and didn't want to wait until their new archbishop got around to visiting their school.
So, they are sending their welcoming song by e-mail through what's called a podcast – audio or audio/video files that can be sent from computer to computer.
"This is our third year doing podcasts connected with school things," says fourth-grade teacher Barb Dyke.
Dyke's teaching assistant, Sheila Vander, suggested a good song for the students to sing would be "Hello," one of the better-known numbers by the Ann Arbor-based singing duo Gemini, which specializes in performing and recording music for children.
"Hello" is a light-hearted song that involves not only the familiar English-language greeting, but its equivalents in French, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese as well as languages from Africa and India.
"She brought in a CD, and I thought the song would work fine, but I looked at the back and saw all the stuff about copyrights and wasn't sure we could get the rights for it. We wouldn't have wanted to do anything illegal," Dyke says.
So Dyke contacted Gemini, and wound up talking with Laszlo Slomovits, who with his twin brother, Sandor, makes up the duo. But after arranging a fee for them to use the song, Slomovits volunteered to throw a personal visit by himself into the bargain.
And on Feb. 11 he came to the school, first to give a performance for the pre-kindergarteners through fifth-graders, and then to rehearse with the fourth-graders and lead them in singing for the podcast.
One of the fourth-graders, Johnny McGraw, served as the recording engineer. (His mom, Susie McGraw, teaches radio broadcasting at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn.)
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Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic
Fourth-grader Johnny McGraw serves as recording engineer for the podcast. |
Originally from Hungary, Slomovits says he and his brother began performing together professionally 36 years ago, but gradually found they most enjoyed performing for children, and that has been their primary focus for the past 25 years. "My dad was a wonderful singer – he was a cantor in a synagogue – and we grew up singing with him; we were a two-boy choir," Slomovits says.
Now, they give concerts at schools and public venues throughout the United States and Canada, singing mostly about things children can relate to, such as food, pets and friendship, as well as stressing values such as respect and honesty. So, besides "Hello," some of their better-known numbers include "Pizza" and "The Cat Song."
"We involve the kids in the doing the music with us, through singing along and hand motions," Slomovits explains. Dyke says the audio track the kids recorded would be combined with a series of still pictures from all of the grades at the school, with some classes holding banners welcoming Archbishop Vigneron and others just waving hello.
And when they send it to him by e-mail (perhaps as soon as today), he will be able to see and hear it right on his computer.
Dyke says doing school-related podcasts and posting them on the school's Internet site – www.straphael-gc.org — has provided a way for parents to keep abreast of what their children are learning at school.
And it has been a learning experience for her, she continues: "When we started, they chose me because I was the most computer-ignorant of all the teachers."
Dyke admits she still has more to learn, but help is available right in the classroom from her computer-savvy fourth-graders. "If you get stuck and don't know what to do next, I've found that if you ask one of the kids, they can tell you," she adds.
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