MINNEAPOLIS – Students at Franklin Middle School have crafted a Super Bowl “welcome to Minnesota” music video of which moms will approve.
Their song “Coats, Hats and Gloves” reminds visitors to properly bundle up for a visit to the Bold North.
“We kind of all wrote it,” Franklin 7th grader Jordan Kueng said. “We all threw in some lyrics, we all like pitched in some ideas.”
The song and video are performed by members of Futureboys and Futuregirls, Franklin’s leadership club.
“It’s not every day you have the Super Bowl in your backyard. When you put in U.S. Bank Stadium from here, the address, it’s 11 minutes away,” said Michael Bratsch, the Franklin teacher who founded the afterschool program.
“This is a great state to live in,” Bratsch continued. “This is our way of showing it.”
Bratsch worked as a music producer in Atlanta and the Twin Cities, before earning his MBA and beginning a teaching career.
In 2016, Bratsch took a teaching job at the newly reopened Franklin Middle School. The North Minneapolis school had been shuttered for nearly a decade.
That same year, Bratsch and his students produced a Franklin school song and video that was featured in a “Land of 10,000 Stories” segment and has since racked up nearly 10,000 views on YouTube.
Franklin principal Karon Cunningham is supportive of Bratsch’s music projects, appearing in both the school song and Super Bowl videos.
“He is one of the most positive people I have ever met,” Cunningham said in the 2016 KARE story.
Bratsch approached Franklin’s dance teacher, Karrie Puckett, about the video for the Super Bowl song. “Mr. B just came to me, he said, ‘Hey, I need a dance routine.’ I said, ‘Hey, I got you.’” Puckett said with a laugh.
Bratsch also sought help from friends outside the school who share his love for music.
Andre Hudson, who helped produce “Coats, Hats and Gloves,” smiled when asked about the song’s message. “You can be fly, but dress warm, please,” he said.
That said, the song carries a deeper message for Franklin students.
“When most people drive around here they probably think it’s just an old building,” 6th grader Niwre Baldwin-Eggleston said about her school.
Her classmate, Nakaiya Abdullah, said she hopes the video helps change wrong impressions about kids on the northside. “We want them to hear more,” she said
Baldwin-Eggleston agrees. “We want them to know that northside schools aren’t always bad,” she said.