The “Happy Friday Song” was an anthem for Morgan County High School for at least a decade in the 2000s. The song was written by art teacher, musician, and director of creativity Tyrus Jerrell Manning III (aka Ty Manning, aka Manning) and some of his students around 2006.
While I was principal, I was making a regular Friday run around the school with the “Woot Woot” wagon, handing out candy bars and well wishes to all of our teachers as we celebrated another great week of learning. It was part of an intentional effort to have a school that was about joyful success. High academic expectations wrapped in gratitude and fun.
I’d become accustomed to students asking “where’s my candy?” To which I would reply with either, “happy teachers lead to happy students!”, or “come back here and teach and I’ll bring candy to you too!” On one Friday, I was visiting Mr. Manning and his Advanced Art Students asked for candy too. I was nearly finished with my visit around the school and I looked in the basket and found a sufficient candy to finish my rounds and to feed the art students. But my ask was this… write an original song of celebration and when I come back around, if you’ve written it and it’s good, I’ll share from the candy basket.
Like so many things we do in school leadership, sometimes the slightest acts have the biggest results.
I came back to the class in a few minutes and Mr. Manning had his guitar out and the class sang for me the song that I would sing hundreds and hundreds of times afterwards. They sang the song that you can hear in the music video above and it was amazing. I asked them to join me on the announcements the next Friday morning and sing it live.
They did. And it was a sensation. It became a part of our culture to celebrate Fridays with the Happy Friday song. The kids made a music video (you can watch above). It spread form the high school to the other schools in our system. Mr. Manning sang it with elementary students. The middle school principal asked that we share it with them. We posted the video on YouTube and people watched it everywhere.
Over the next few years, students at our school made other versions of it via music video including a rap version, a bluegrass version, and a remix (after a few years) entitled “I’m Bringing Happy Back,” to the tune of a similar song by Justin Timberlake.
If you said “Happy Happy!” to somebody in Morgan County during those years, you were most likely going to get a reply of “Friday, Friday!”
I don’t really know how to tell you just how much this song meant to so many people. It was a combination of so many things that we were about as a school– celebration, creativity, student voice, and fun.
Sometimes the slightest acts lead to the biggest results. Don’t pass up a chance to let good things happen at your school… among your students and among your teachers too.
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