No More Biting
Lyrics by Sandy Pliskin
Melody derived from “Before I’ll Be a Slave/Oh Freedom!”
One kid bit another, teachers are perplexed
Now, it’s time for circle, what should we do next?
Hey, I know…We could sing…
No more biting, no more biting, no more biting in this room
And before I hurt my friend, we will talk ‘till the trouble ends
And we’ll sing and be safe in this room.
But what about hitting?
No more hitting, no more hitting, no more hitting in this room
And before I hurt my friend, we will talk ‘till the trouble ends
And we’ll sing and be safe in this room.
So what will happen instead?
We’ll be sharing, we’ll be sharing,
we’ll be sharing in this room
And before I hurt my friend, we will talk ‘till the trouble ends
And we’ll sing and be safe in this room.
Anything else?
Singing and laughing, singing and laughing,
there’ll be singing and laughing in this room
And before I hurt my friend, we will talk ‘till the trouble ends
And we’ll sing and be safe in this room.
And we’ll sing and be safe in this school.
And we’ll sing, and be safe in this WORLD!
A note from Sandy:
This song recounts a true story. In the 90’s I spent some time as a mental health consultant for several early education classrooms in Cambridge. One day, just before circle time (during which I was slated to lead some singing), there was a biting incident. A pall fell over the classroom, and the previous plans for music time had clearly gone out the window.
While the children and teachers were cleaning up the classroom, I was tuning my banjo and pondering how to respond. The tune of the great civil rights era song Oh Freedom! popped into my head, and the line “No more biting” fell into place. So I began circle singing “No More Biting” to the tune of Oh Freedom!
Children sang along. It felt like the pall began to lift. We’d named what happened, and what was on everyone’s minds, all without blaming anyone. But where to go next? I suggested that we think and sing about other things we didn’t want to see happen in our classroom. We easily generated several verses worth of “No mores”.
Still, we were talking about an awful lot of negatives; was that how I wanted to end the song? No, not really! So next, I prompted the children to think and sing about what we did want to see in our room. Once more, there were lots of great suggestions, all sung with gusto.
By this time, it felt like we had shaken off the trauma, by acknowledging what had occurred and then imagining a happier environment full of our wished-for experiences.
Sandy Pliskin opens in a new tab lives in Cranston, RI. He recently retired from a fifty year career of teaching, counseling, and coaching young children and the people who care for them. “No More Biting” is the first song on Sandy’s soon-to-be-released album, I Make No Promise. The album also includes “Androcles”, a re-telling of an Aesop’s tale for children, as well as many more ‘adult’ songs about war and peace, greed and generosity, despair and hope, elections, the Beatles, cannabis, and a guide, in the form of a round, to the state of Rhode Island.
