(Sage Smiley / KSTK)
Evergreen Elementary School’s two-dozen third-grade students hold out their hands for sanitizer and trickle into the music room to sit criss-cross on a colorful rug in front of music teacher Tasha Morse.
“Back in the day,” Morse says, “The third graders, we would all take a field trip down to the Island to Faith Lutheran Church, they used to have an elders’ luncheon down there. And we would go and sing these songs in person for our elders. But recently since COVID, they haven’t been doing that. But we still want to be able to spread some awesome joy for the entire community. So we are going to sing for Miss Smiley for the radio station and for the whole entire community today. Does that sound like a great plan?”
“Yeah,” chorus the students.
“Remember, I told you everything that you could expect,” Morse says, “That Miss Smiley would be at the front of the room, she’d have a really nice microphone and her box that records us?”
“You didn’t tell us she’d wear headphones,” quips a student in the front row.
“Well, that’s just so she can hear,” Morse says, pulling up lyrics to the first song: ‘Alaska’s Flag’.
All eyes are trained on Morse as she silently cues in the singers.
“Watch my hands, because there’s an introduction,” she says.
The students also perform a local favorite: “The Wrangell song, which was written by third graders over 20 years ago,” Morse says. Her mother-in-law, Karen Morse, helped write the song.
“What a cool experience that we get to share this with everybody,” Morse says when the third-graders finish singing. “What do you guys think?”
“Squishy,” one student emphatically responds.
“Squishy? I don’t know what that has to do with anything,” Morse says, with a laugh.
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