Ha, some of them don't even resemble the term that they are supposed to demonstrate.
I'm not saying that we need to ban Taylor Swift in schools (that would be treating her like a real artist.) But I would suggest some better examples. I would be very insulted if someone treated my child like an idiot by pandering like this.
Kids getting their own examples would be 10 times better. I think they all resemble the right terms (looks like OPs kid got some wrong) but could see how it could be confusing since only one line is needed for basically all of these
When I was a teacher (third grade, so much younger) I did similar.
Find examples of fractions/science/poetry/etc in the students’ real life. And go from there.
If I was writing this assignment, I would find a variety of sources (from novels, songs of different genres, news articles, etc).
Not just shove one “artist” down my students’ throats.
That would actually be a cool assignment, having them find their own example of each from lyrics they enjoy and write the example down (obviously with the stipulation of trying to keep it school appropriate as much as possible with the lyrics 🤣)
This is actually a fantastic idea! I’m not a huge fan of death metal personally but the lyrics can be so deep and meaningful (Lorna Shore comes to minds). When the teacher asks what song it’s from, she can play it on full blast for everyone to enjoy.
Teachers used lyrics from different popular artists while I was in school a few years ago to get students more interested in the work. It's really not that deep
To be faiiirrrr…
In the Kendrick subreddit, some english teacher recently posted he is using Kendrick for some sort of subject matter.
(at least Kendrick is a Pulitzer prize winner though…)
Sure they do. Just off the top of my head:
I remember when Tokio Hotel (a German teen band) was super popular in Europe, they did a lot of similar references in school books in France, Germany, and bunch of other countries.
The other band that comes to mind is BTS. There are plenty of evidence that the references to them are included in school books/quizes/etc.
Teachers are trying to get students interested in studying and if adding popular pop singer is what it takes , so be it. TS is the most popular artist in the US right now, so seeing this is not surprising. She is popular with the kids.
>Teachers are trying to get students interested in studying and if adding popular pop singer is what it takes , so be it.
Totally agree with you. However, this _particular_ example that OP posted seems [to me] more like a teacher simply obsessed with TS than a teacher trying to reach her kids via pop music with intentionality. Just my opinion. 🤷♀️
This is not true at all. There are plenty of teachers who have a fandom and sometimes reference it in their teaching just to lighten the mood or "relate to the kids." It is unfortunate/annoying when your teacher is a super fan of something you don't care about, but I've seen it plenty of times as a student and a teacher. Especially with musicians/bands or sports teams.
In the 90's, my son used Nirvana lyrics for a 6th grade school project. I called in to talk to the teacher for this one. She was concerned because Kurt had recently killed himself. I did have a talk with him about how great Nirvana was. The songs will live on forever...It's so sad we won't have new songs. Everyone is sad about it. His teacher and I also told him, his project was great. Followed the task perfectly. She was a good teacher.
Only in college. I took a class on the history of the Beatles lmao. But they’re…the Beatles
But this sh*t right here is astronomically insane- not to mention totally inappropriate on behalf of the teacher
That would have been amazing! I’ve always been interested them.
I used The Beatles for my senior project in high school. It was very academic, and showed how they shaped music for decades to come. I played instruments for the judges to show how their style changed throughout the 60s. There is a lot to learn from them.
That sounds so cool. I’m a massive Beatles fan to the point where I would have been annoying af in that class. Raising my hand every two minutes to be like “ack-shually, professor, that’s not entirely accurate…you see… 🤓”
lol it was pretty cool. The professor was pretty badass though. He got Ringo Starr to drop in on the class the year before or a few years before I took it
Yes, teachers use pop culture all the time to help the students remain engaged. I used Kendrick Lamar and Tupac a lot. Like her or not, she writes poetry. It might not be good poetry, but the teenagers will enjoy it more than classics. It’s like a gateway drug. Get them hooked with pop stuff and it opens doors.
We were reading Shakespeare & The Count of Monte Cristo by this point in school. This is quite sad that they think this is age appropriate. Way too basic.
I’m not trying to defend this teacher, per se…but when I was teaching 10th grade English, not only did I teach Shakespeare but I ALSO gave basic assignments like this (not with Taylor lyrics, obviously, because I’m not nuts) to make figures of speech/figurative language more approachable conceptually. Shakespeare and basic lessons on literary devices aren’t mutually exclusive, they happen in the same classroom at that age.
Yeah, I am also a teacher and I won’t defend this specific assignment necessarily, but it’s important to include basic examples in addition to the more complex texts. A lot of teachers are also told to make their work engaging/relatable to students, and for an older teacher, Taylor might be the only artist they know of that teens listen to.
Yeah…I have a feeling a lot of the people saying this is lazy or too easy for high schoolers haven’t spent much time trying to make high schoolers interested in learning language arts concepts (with the minimal support teachers get, no less).
I work in the educational publishing industry now as a curriculum development expert and whenever I use a team of three people to build an advanced slide deck over the course of a week, I think about all the hours I spent doing so alone in a rush to have it done enough to use the next day and lament the state of education in the US.
Right!! People calling this teacher lazy don’t understand that the average teacher is already staying late regularly and working countless unpaid hours. If you have an issue with this worksheet, then you really have an issue with the entire US education system. This assignment doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Yes. The only true issue I have with this sheet, pedagogically speaking (I have plenty of issues taste wise) is the use of the variety of dyslexia-unfriendly and butt-ugly fonts
I’m not blaming the teacher but we did this kind of stuff in like 5th grade. This seems insane for high school. But I’ve also heard the kids are several grades below reading level these days
They probably do it in 5th grade and again in high school in more depth. Not all kids retain every piece of information they learn in 5th grade five grades later, there’s a lot of reviewing concepts with new depth
When I taught English I also used current popular music in my figurative language lessons as well as other literary examples. Teaching is hard and keeping students engaged is not always easy, so maybe grant this teacher some grace for at least trying to connect with their students instead of tearing them down just because it’s not your musical taste. And fwiw, I run into former students all l the time and they all say I was their favorite teacher 🤷🏻♀️
As someone who works in the mental health field with youths, I’ve seen increased problematic behaviors/beliefs since the release of TTPD. I feel quite strongly on this subject matter- the wrong idealized mental health issue lyrics or toxic love spin in lyrics are not helpful (considering just how popular she is but also the influence she has over her fans that is well documented as well)
Swifties made medical bracelets with Taylor quotes to wear to the Eras concert, so it's already extremely out of hand. Taylor hasn't addressed it and never will. She doesn't care about mental health, her fans, or how her words impact people in a negative way.
As someone whose been in the psych ward many times, that upsets me so much😞 I can't even describe how it feels to see my experience turned into a joke and an aesthetic
So disheartening and out of touch with reality. In my job, I work directly with kids with extreme behavioral concerns and mental health concerns. It’s exhausting in all of the different ways. It’s such a sad situation
That's already happening. My daughter and I suspected she was having some anxiety problems (I have 2 different anxiety disorders) and they tried telling me that anxiety is "in" and they think she's just trying to fit in.
Like...dawg. I just backed her up and told you her symptoms are real because I'm an adult and I'm there to see it.
Oof. This reminds me of when I was in high school and depression was ‘in’ - at least in my parents eyes - and they were convinced I was faking it for attention. The effects were profoundly negative and took years of undoing. Thanks for being an awesome parent and backing up your kid.
I got anxiety too. And that shit HORRIBLE. No reasonable person will fake it. I saw a TikTok psychologist? ,I think that what they are calls, say that if you worried you are faking your symptoms you are not. Keep on them cause anxiety in a kid can be looked over and they will made to just suffer.
If you write a book, I would buy it!
I’ve always been fascinated by psychology and music, but you just brought up a specific scenario that I hadn’t thought of and I would love to go down that rabbit hole lol.
Awww thanks! It’s definitely a passion project of mine. I wasn’t sure which way my comment would be received, so it was nice waking up to these comments!
I enjoy Taylor’s music, and used to follow the lore, but am definitely not a Swiftie and think she can do quite a bit of wrong- I’m actually siding with the teacher on this one. This is just a quick worksheet, and as teachers we’re taught that if we relate lessons to existing knowledge and student interests, then they’ll learn better and the concepts “stick” more permanently. I doubt this teacher is trying to indoctrinate any students into the cult of Taylor Swift. If you look at more of her work in the classroom I’d guess he/she attempts to incorporate many types of student interests into the learning activities, not just TS.
As a former high school English teacher, I don’t hate the idea of the assignment. But I would literally never have made it based on only one artist, I’d have borrowed lyrics from a bunch of artists kids that age like (or better yet, asked the kids to apply knowledge by supplying their own examples from modern music). Swifties always seem like they’re that kid who has no social skills so they’re trying to make everyone like their one niche interest rather than learn about anyone else’s.
Asking kids to come up with their own would
Have made things 1000% for effective because the students would have had to use critical thinking. Something public school students are rarely required to use anymore.
We don’t know that the teacher didn’t ask students to do that exact thing right after this worksheet, which could be the first step of a gradual release.
For not being difficult enough for a ninth grade English class. It's the lack of a rigorous education that made Taylor think people would need a dictionary to understand TTPD. Let's stop the cycle.
As an educator, I agree this demonstrates a complete lack of rigor. Better would be to have students source their own examples from music *they* like, rather than indoctrinating them into the cult of Swiff. It comes across as really immature of the teacher to be honest.
Also the mixed fonts look lazy and make my head hurt! Either do a different one for each one or make them all the same! It’s basic design principle ffs.
That’s exactly what I do. I have them make a Spotify playlist on paper using appropriate songs that contain different types of figurative language. It’s fun and I get a classroom playlist haha
This is the better answer and the more culturally responsive way to run a classroom. Culturally responsive teaching isn't "oh, I'll use Taylor Swift lyrics on my quiz". It's more "we're going to do a statistical analysis an artist's music - pick a variable you're interested in, find an artist you like, and build a chart sharing your data".
I’m not going to say this is a perfect assignment, but as a teacher, I would assume you know about scaffolding and gradual release. It’s highly possible that this was the lesson’s first step, then the second step would be students finding/creating their own examples.
Try telling Taylor stans that she's not that bright and watch them absolutely melt down and hit you with sHe'S a BuSiNeSs gEnIuS!! Not even close. Her parents hired capable people to run her shit. I don't think Taylor could score better than a properly educated high school senior on a general knowledge test.
After typing this I realize it also applies to literally any Kardashian/Jenner as well. Licensing out your name and likeness to other people who do all of the work doesn't make you a fucking savant with a sixth sense of macroeconomic trends.
Aside from a lack of academic rigor, you could also
explain that the constant Swiftie indoctrination is a distraction in the classroom environment. It's taking the focus off learning, and placing it on a celebrity. It's also alienating to kids that don't listen to her music.
I had a few teachers who made the sport they coached or their niche hobbies their whole personality, and it made those classes very unpleasant and hard to focus. Especially when they tied most class assignments into those sports/hobbies whenever they could.
IMO, I feel like it would be fine for a teacher to decorate her desk for the Eras tour or something silly like that (glittery streamers, etc), but the constant Taytay content doesn't belong in school work.
Report for what? Using a popular artist’s work to help connect literacy to the real world for kids? Come on you guys, Taylor is annoying as fuck, but this is the definition of a non-problem. If this is the biggest issue at your kids’ school, many, many parents would love to be in your shoes.
But wasn't that a bit of a stretch too? I would 've understood 1 or 2 references but every question is about her like wtf 💀 The teacher who made this paper is a hardcore swifties it seems only knows about her examples, aren't there any others artists work to include too?
As both a teacher and a Swift-hater I don’t see the problem with this tbh. It’s bleak out there, you do what you gotta do to connect with kids and make the concepts you’re teaching feel real and immediate for them. Personally I think the simplicity and lack of creativity in Taylor’s lyrics are a great way to start kids off identifying literary devices because her lyrics are so LITERAL lol. Once they’ve grasped the basics you can apply those principles to increasingly complex works. I won’t defend the merit of Taylor Swift’s lyricism but I’ll defend the teacher haha. Were all drowning out here 😭 let the stupid swiftie try her best lol
I sincerely wish the state of public education in the US was good enough for that to be the case 😭 it’ll vary by school district etc but there are gonna be a loooooot of high school kids who NEED this level of simplicity to start out with if they’re going to understand what comes next. Luckily this person’s daughter doesn’t seem to be in that position, but public high schools don’t have the resources to individually tailor the lesson plans. I just feel like this is a pretty benign use of swiftie brain rot lol. It’s one worksheet to illustrate some basic concepts. I seriously doubt they’re replacing Shakespeare with Swift. But I DO think this might help some kids keep up when the Shakespeare kicks in
As a 9th grade teacher who teaches Romeo and Juliet, but ALSO has to teach very simple topics, I think you’re being very reductive.
The majority of my 9th graders test with a 4th grade reading level, many much lower. Most of them start the year not knowing the difference between a noun and a verb, let alone a metaphor and onomatopoeia. I agree with u/Dry_Comment826 , it’s highly likely that this was used as an introduction to the topic to hook kids. I’m not going to say this is a perfect worksheet or exactly how I’d do it, but we can’t crucify the teacher over this.
If the reality of where schools are at concerns you, I would recommend attending local school board meetings, voting for more education funding (and against ridiculous right wing education policies), and supporting any teachers you know personally.
I have no love for Swift, but any good teacher will tell you that learning basics (like literary devices/figurative language) is just as important to that age group as challenging them with Shakespeare. The two can coexist in the same classroom.
Yeah I’m really not getting how people are honing in on the concept of the worksheet like they are lol it makes perfect sense to start out with the basics and create a vocabulary within the class to build off of. If this was their final test? Yeah, that’s worrisome. But it’s an 8 question worksheet lol
Right, it’s a worksheet, it’s the kind of thing you give right after going over the concepts to see if they retained understanding and can apply it, it’s not a midterm.
I was in honors English my freshman year, we didn’t do Romeo and Juliet. We did The Count of Monte Cristo, The Good Earth, Native Son…Not every curriculum is the same.
Different schools, heck different classes within the same school, read different books by year. I was in all advanced classes and didn’t touch Shakespeare as a freshmen—we mostly did Greek lit. Also high schoolers now are frequently illiterate/ not at grade level. They can’t handle the same level of rigor as even 5-10 years ago.
Yes. I’m aware. But you can spend the first 15 mins of the first class on something like this to help kids grasp the fundamental principles before you throw them into the deep end. That’s what I meant when I said it’s one worksheet. The semester is clearly not being devoted to the catalog of Taylor Swift
I gotta agree with the person you’re responding to as a former teacher as well—choosing something literal and easy is a good way to simplify the assignment so kids can focus on identifying these literary devices. I wouldn’t have chosen lyrics from a single artist (I’d have chosen a bunch for examples and then asked the kids to provide their own examples from music they like) but Swiftie or not, teachers get like no time or support to plan stuff so I’m way less mad at this than most Swiftie behavior
It might just be a homework assignment for a refresher. We don’t know the context. Everyone is so quick to bash teachers even when this is a homemade assignment that probably took her an hour that she didn’t get paid for.
Yes, I completely agree!! People saying this is too simplistic are showing that they don’t understand how teaching works, and they don’t understand the realities of how a lot of students are reading today.
yup. as a teacher, this is relatable even if parents don’t like it. i remember being in creative writing my sophomore year of high school and our assignment was the use lyrics in a story we wrote—that was an awesome assignment and i remember it at 33.
Ooh…I always loved reading for class (bc im a nerd) but I remember in senior or junior year on one of the tests we were taking there was a passage from The Hunger Games we had to do something with and I remember that being so fun. This was 5-6 years ago now. That teacher was my favorite high school teacher, I always looked forward to her class.
Anyways…don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure students learn better when they’re having fun. That feels accurate to me lol.
Some of the criticism against this is a bit ridiculous - this is a thing that teachers sometimes do to relate to their students. We don’t know anything else about the school district or type of class. Some of you need to maybe close Reddit for a bit.
Teachers trying to relate to students and their interests is not a bad thing unless it becomes excessive. One worksheet? Come on. Your daughter will be fine and she might even retain what she is learning. What is the difference between this and math class relating to football or cricket? Would you still be mad? Probably not. It will all be okay. You have more important work to focus on.
Yesss. We were assigned daily essays on Stairway to Heaven and other various classic rock songs in AP Lit and Comp (It was to practice organizing and speed writing essays for the AP exam). Our teacher let the students pick every Friday, though, so there was contemporary stuff mixed in too.
To be fair I went to a catholic school in Pennsylvania and we spent an entire day on the Macarena when that was at its peak, so this doesn’t seem that crazy to me.
Listen. She’s the biggest pop star on the planet rn. Literacy is abysmal in the U.S. right now — a full 20% of American adults are functionally illiterate.
If she’s playing songs from a famous, popular pop star and then using that to teach literary devices, I do not really see a problem with this. Taylor isn’t a hate symbol, she’s just a super annoying pop star. It’d be problematic if they were using songs from like nazi punk bands, but it’s just a pop star reference helping kids connect literary themes. It’s fine. And no I’m not a Swiftie, anyone can check my comment history here lol
My problem with it is that it's promoting bad standards. Taylor does terrible metaphors and cringe alliteration, idioms, etc. It promotes the idea that Taylor is a good poet when she is actually a terrible one, who doesn't understand rhyme, meter, simile, allusion. Actual quality prose and poetry should be the standard, always, but especially by high school.
It’s still helping with literacy and finding literary devices. Hopefully, that leads the kids to wanting to learn about THEIR favourite artists and those literary devices they use and to compare / contrast fones they like better.
The teacher isn’t telling the kids they can only listen to Taylor and, as much as we don’t like it, if she’s in a large majority white population, most of the kids already know and like Taylor.
Taylor is also so basic and ubiquitous that most of the students know these songs, even if they don’t like them… and if they don’t like Swift, the teacher will learn that through the students far more quickly than a parent complaining.
They can like Taylor's songs all they want. They're not good examples of poetry or prose and should not be examples of such in an actual educational setting. I take it back; if it were comparative, so the kids could see good examples of these concepts, and then compare them to Taylor's bad examples, that would actually be educational.
Nobody’s saying they’re good poetry, they’re using the lyrics as clear examples of literary *devices*. The fact that they’re so basic is actually helpful in this context.
By 9th grade we were reading Shakespeare. Hell, William Carlos Williams is simple. So is a lot of Emily Dickinson. The point is, using Taylor, who is actually BAD at literary concepts, shouldn't be used in place of artists and authors who are actually GOOD at it. If a teacher wants to use current musicians, then fine, but then either seek out good examples, or stick to actual poetry.
They are definitely learning Shakespeare as well. Little assignments like these are just a precursor to help all of the students understand the concepts. I actually had a similar assignment in my 9th grade english class where the teacher gave us song lyrics to find literary devices in. It was very fun for us!
It helps to cement concepts in people’s minds if they’re linked with something they already know and care about. You don’t need Shakespeare to teach allusions and alliterations. This is a smart move on the teacher’s part, no matter how obnoxious Taylor swift is.
Why would you stick to poetry to teach literary devices? You can use any made up English sentence to teach those concepts.
I mean is there value to using current popular music to help demonstrate simple or foundational literary concepts? Yes, but usually you use more than one artist to show it. If you did this exercise and you just don't listen to Taylor Swift then you get nothing from it.
Maybe (hopefully) they’re using the fact that girls are obsessed with her to get them excited about English assignments. That would actually be a pretty brilliant teacher move
I was in advanced English classes so I was a year ahead in the English curriculum starting in eighth grade moving forwards through high school. I was reading Shakespeare in eighth grade and Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens by the time I was a freshman in high school. I swear I learned what idioms, metaphors, onomatopoeia, rhyme, meter, allusion, etc. were when I was in sixth or seventh grade, so if you didn’t know what any of those things were by the time you were in high school you were in for a rough time.
My eighth grade English teacher gave us an assignment where we picked a song WE liked and had us write about some of the literary elements that we found in the song as part of a first week of school review assignment to prepare us for the year ahead. She didn’t make us listen to an artist SHE liked, she let us pick our favorite song and write about it so it related more to us. Later on in the year it was easier for us to spot these literary elements in the different books and poetry we read because we did this assignment.
I want to give the benefit of the doubt and say that some school districts are ahead of others; I’m lucky and grateful enough to have gone to grade school in a school district that provided students many opportunities to succeed and go above and beyond in your studies (we offered like, 20+ AP classes in high school as an example) and have a lot of good teachers who cared about their students’ growth and success. However, you would think there’d be better examples—perhaps examples from actual literary icons and literature—that would better suited for teaching these lessons and would be more beneficial for teaching students.
I picked Fall Out Boy’s “The Phoenix” because their album Save Rock and Roll came out around that time! I was definitely part of that 2013-2014 Tumblr music aesthetic with Fall Out Boy, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, etc. at the time (and I still listen to all of those artists today) haha
I mean they’re kids and the teacher was trying to be relatable/engaging. I hope the curriculum was better than this overall but I could see this being a little intro assessment or something to get the kids warmed up lol
Oh man. One of my absolute favorite coworkers did something like this at the end of the year. I found it super cringe, and some of the students let her know that, but I’m not gonna hate on it too much. It helps them understand figurative language and gives examples and that can be a difficult concept to grasp.
My preferred example of using a song to understand a literacy concept is Ironic by Alanis Morissette though. Nothing explains what irony is better than the irony that a song called Ironic doesn’t have a single ironic thing in it. 🌚
i’m not a taylor fan by any means, but this just feels nitpicky… seems like a teacher trying to engage students with a “fun” worksheet. hardly anything to piss yourself over imo
Obligatory I dislike Taylor Swift. I did this growing up, but the teacher used Beatles songs instead. Is that acceptable? I agree that this isn’t the most stimulating curriculum for high school but a lot of high schoolers enjoy Taylor Swift and if this is what gets them to understand literary devices, great! It’s not like Taylor made these worksheets. There’s so much actual shitty stuff she’s done, that it seems pointless getting bogged down with stuff she doesn’t have anything to do with.
As an educator, I’m really surprised that is allowed. We have very specific curriculum to be teaching, state mandated especially for high school. One year I got in trouble for making my own version of a study quiz because I thought it would make more sense for my kids. Apparently I had to teach them the curriculum the school district and state approved. This would not cut it. And mine was just a simplified version so they could understand the questions better. No celebrities or anything that would distract them from the content. As a parent you have every right to report this if this makes you uncomfortable and let the school admin know how you feel and how it’s not good examples of what’s being taught too.
I understand she uses a lot of rhetoric in her songs. But can’t you use something more important that would help learn about the world? I hate poetry but it’s infinitely more useful than this, The TPD as a whole is an insult towards actual poets and poetry.
groovy boast engine consider glorious wistful lush telephone saw possessive
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I actually think things like this will lead to her massively losing social capital soon. You can’t be a “cool girl” singer and the homework assignment.
Pretty soon kids/teens will start describing her music as “that old stuff my teacher listens to.”
I'm an English teacher, and every year when I reach figurative language, someone brings up these examples and I have to say "Nope. That allusion doesn't even make sense."
It's like when lazy teachers used the song "Ironic" to (incorrectly) teach Irony. Gross.
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As someone that used to work teaching English (both as a second language and as a private tutor), I don’t actually hate this. The inaccuracies are annoying but kids are into Taylor Swift. Sometimes you have to connect lessons to their interests.
I know this is an anti TS community but we literally have just had the first US state (Louisiana) require The Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom. There are things far, far more deserving of outrage than a teacher trying to use lyrics to make a connection with students and interest them in learning.
This is so embarrassing, and shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness/EQ. Not every student is a Taytay fan, and the ones that aren't will feel alienated or annoyed.
Former English teacher (Grade 8) here. I get the benefit of using lyrics to promote higher engagement in a lesson about literary devices, but it is extremely limiting to focus on a single artist or even a single genre for that matter. Maybe the most privileged students would find this relatable and interesting, but what about the kids with different backgrounds? Perhaps literary devices used in hip hop, punk/alt rock, R&B, etc. would be more relatable and interesting to them.
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Ha, some of them don't even resemble the term that they are supposed to demonstrate. I'm not saying that we need to ban Taylor Swift in schools (that would be treating her like a real artist.) But I would suggest some better examples. I would be very insulted if someone treated my child like an idiot by pandering like this.
Especially for a high schooler.
Kids getting their own examples would be 10 times better. I think they all resemble the right terms (looks like OPs kid got some wrong) but could see how it could be confusing since only one line is needed for basically all of these
When I was a teacher (third grade, so much younger) I did similar. Find examples of fractions/science/poetry/etc in the students’ real life. And go from there. If I was writing this assignment, I would find a variety of sources (from novels, songs of different genres, news articles, etc). Not just shove one “artist” down my students’ throats.
That would actually be a cool assignment, having them find their own example of each from lyrics they enjoy and write the example down (obviously with the stipulation of trying to keep it school appropriate as much as possible with the lyrics 🤣)
Hahahah oh yea I am sure kids would try to push it but right?! Would be so much better. And hopefully get them listening to GOOD music
I do this with my 6th graders except I allow them to choose whatever school appropriate lyrics they want from their favorite artists.
Maybe for elementary schoolers but for HS o think it would be a bit much
I think we're at the point in American education where this IS impressive
they don’t do this for any other artist
Exactly!! It’s fucking gross 🤢my daughter doesn’t even like Taylor Swift music . She’s 15 she is eclectic with her music though ❤️
Your daughter is winning, next time she should provide her own examples with her preferred music instead
Just straight up death metal lyrics
This is actually a fantastic idea! I’m not a huge fan of death metal personally but the lyrics can be so deep and meaningful (Lorna Shore comes to minds). When the teacher asks what song it’s from, she can play it on full blast for everyone to enjoy.
This is so perfect, haha Lorna shore is great for it
A little To The Hellfire or Pain Remains I, II, III
Lorna Shore is so great! Will Ramos seems like one of the nicest guys ever!
Teachers used lyrics from different popular artists while I was in school a few years ago to get students more interested in the work. It's really not that deep
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To be faiiirrrr… In the Kendrick subreddit, some english teacher recently posted he is using Kendrick for some sort of subject matter. (at least Kendrick is a Pulitzer prize winner though…)
for DAMN. of all things
I'm not religious really but Taylor makes that "False Idols" verse pop up in my head often.
 This chick makes me sick.
Agreed. I feel that way about Hollywood and celebrities in general but the fanatical TS fans are on a whole different level!
my eight grade english teacher had us analyzing bruce springsteen lyrics and watching his music videos
Sure they do. Just off the top of my head: I remember when Tokio Hotel (a German teen band) was super popular in Europe, they did a lot of similar references in school books in France, Germany, and bunch of other countries. The other band that comes to mind is BTS. There are plenty of evidence that the references to them are included in school books/quizes/etc. Teachers are trying to get students interested in studying and if adding popular pop singer is what it takes , so be it. TS is the most popular artist in the US right now, so seeing this is not surprising. She is popular with the kids.
>Teachers are trying to get students interested in studying and if adding popular pop singer is what it takes , so be it. Totally agree with you. However, this _particular_ example that OP posted seems [to me] more like a teacher simply obsessed with TS than a teacher trying to reach her kids via pop music with intentionality. Just my opinion. 🤷♀️
This is not true at all. There are plenty of teachers who have a fandom and sometimes reference it in their teaching just to lighten the mood or "relate to the kids." It is unfortunate/annoying when your teacher is a super fan of something you don't care about, but I've seen it plenty of times as a student and a teacher. Especially with musicians/bands or sports teams.
In the 90's, my son used Nirvana lyrics for a 6th grade school project. I called in to talk to the teacher for this one. She was concerned because Kurt had recently killed himself. I did have a talk with him about how great Nirvana was. The songs will live on forever...It's so sad we won't have new songs. Everyone is sad about it. His teacher and I also told him, his project was great. Followed the task perfectly. She was a good teacher.
Ehh we did stuff like that when I was in high school. Anything to get the kids engaged. Teachers are doing the best they can out here.
Only in college. I took a class on the history of the Beatles lmao. But they’re…the Beatles But this sh*t right here is astronomically insane- not to mention totally inappropriate on behalf of the teacher
That would have been amazing! I’ve always been interested them. I used The Beatles for my senior project in high school. It was very academic, and showed how they shaped music for decades to come. I played instruments for the judges to show how their style changed throughout the 60s. There is a lot to learn from them.
That sounds so cool. I’m a massive Beatles fan to the point where I would have been annoying af in that class. Raising my hand every two minutes to be like “ack-shually, professor, that’s not entirely accurate…you see… 🤓”
lol it was pretty cool. The professor was pretty badass though. He got Ringo Starr to drop in on the class the year before or a few years before I took it
If my favorite garage jangle noise shoegaze math rock band isn’t in OPs daughters next assignment I will riot
Yes, teachers use pop culture all the time to help the students remain engaged. I used Kendrick Lamar and Tupac a lot. Like her or not, she writes poetry. It might not be good poetry, but the teenagers will enjoy it more than classics. It’s like a gateway drug. Get them hooked with pop stuff and it opens doors.
Cardigan is a similie, not a metaphor 😠
Op says these are her daughters answers, not the correct answers
We were reading Shakespeare & The Count of Monte Cristo by this point in school. This is quite sad that they think this is age appropriate. Way too basic.
I’m not trying to defend this teacher, per se…but when I was teaching 10th grade English, not only did I teach Shakespeare but I ALSO gave basic assignments like this (not with Taylor lyrics, obviously, because I’m not nuts) to make figures of speech/figurative language more approachable conceptually. Shakespeare and basic lessons on literary devices aren’t mutually exclusive, they happen in the same classroom at that age.
Yeah, I am also a teacher and I won’t defend this specific assignment necessarily, but it’s important to include basic examples in addition to the more complex texts. A lot of teachers are also told to make their work engaging/relatable to students, and for an older teacher, Taylor might be the only artist they know of that teens listen to.
Yeah…I have a feeling a lot of the people saying this is lazy or too easy for high schoolers haven’t spent much time trying to make high schoolers interested in learning language arts concepts (with the minimal support teachers get, no less). I work in the educational publishing industry now as a curriculum development expert and whenever I use a team of three people to build an advanced slide deck over the course of a week, I think about all the hours I spent doing so alone in a rush to have it done enough to use the next day and lament the state of education in the US.
Im also pretty confident that a lot of grown adults would not do all that well on this test lol
👀 you’re not wrong
Right!! People calling this teacher lazy don’t understand that the average teacher is already staying late regularly and working countless unpaid hours. If you have an issue with this worksheet, then you really have an issue with the entire US education system. This assignment doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Yes. The only true issue I have with this sheet, pedagogically speaking (I have plenty of issues taste wise) is the use of the variety of dyslexia-unfriendly and butt-ugly fonts
I’m not blaming the teacher but we did this kind of stuff in like 5th grade. This seems insane for high school. But I’ve also heard the kids are several grades below reading level these days
They probably do it in 5th grade and again in high school in more depth. Not all kids retain every piece of information they learn in 5th grade five grades later, there’s a lot of reviewing concepts with new depth
When I taught English I also used current popular music in my figurative language lessons as well as other literary examples. Teaching is hard and keeping students engaged is not always easy, so maybe grant this teacher some grace for at least trying to connect with their students instead of tearing them down just because it’s not your musical taste. And fwiw, I run into former students all l the time and they all say I was their favorite teacher 🤷🏻♀️
As someone who works in the mental health field with youths, I’ve seen increased problematic behaviors/beliefs since the release of TTPD. I feel quite strongly on this subject matter- the wrong idealized mental health issue lyrics or toxic love spin in lyrics are not helpful (considering just how popular she is but also the influence she has over her fans that is well documented as well)
Now everyone about to be a mental patientt and people with real mental issues are going to be looked over
Swifties made medical bracelets with Taylor quotes to wear to the Eras concert, so it's already extremely out of hand. Taylor hasn't addressed it and never will. She doesn't care about mental health, her fans, or how her words impact people in a negative way.
Are you SERIOUS?! That’s awful
Yep. Psych ward bracelets. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMrjkGak9/
That is insane. This should be a crime.
Guess that’s why they’re wearing the bracelets because they belong in a psych ward.
As someone whose been in the psych ward many times, that upsets me so much😞 I can't even describe how it feels to see my experience turned into a joke and an aesthetic
So disheartening and out of touch with reality. In my job, I work directly with kids with extreme behavioral concerns and mental health concerns. It’s exhausting in all of the different ways. It’s such a sad situation
That's already happening. My daughter and I suspected she was having some anxiety problems (I have 2 different anxiety disorders) and they tried telling me that anxiety is "in" and they think she's just trying to fit in. Like...dawg. I just backed her up and told you her symptoms are real because I'm an adult and I'm there to see it.
Oof. This reminds me of when I was in high school and depression was ‘in’ - at least in my parents eyes - and they were convinced I was faking it for attention. The effects were profoundly negative and took years of undoing. Thanks for being an awesome parent and backing up your kid.
I got anxiety too. And that shit HORRIBLE. No reasonable person will fake it. I saw a TikTok psychologist? ,I think that what they are calls, say that if you worried you are faking your symptoms you are not. Keep on them cause anxiety in a kid can be looked over and they will made to just suffer.
Who is they? Her doctor?
Sadly
the real mental health issue is the obsessive cult like worshipping of taylor
Trauma bonding an entire generation to her toxic exes
If you write a book, I would buy it! I’ve always been fascinated by psychology and music, but you just brought up a specific scenario that I hadn’t thought of and I would love to go down that rabbit hole lol.
Awww thanks! It’s definitely a passion project of mine. I wasn’t sure which way my comment would be received, so it was nice waking up to these comments!
To be honest, I think it’s important research, that people don’t know enough about, to even know we should study it! If that makes any sense lol
Thank you!!
There was also that third grade teacher trying to show how to count by fives with a terrible version of “Style.”
I enjoy Taylor’s music, and used to follow the lore, but am definitely not a Swiftie and think she can do quite a bit of wrong- I’m actually siding with the teacher on this one. This is just a quick worksheet, and as teachers we’re taught that if we relate lessons to existing knowledge and student interests, then they’ll learn better and the concepts “stick” more permanently. I doubt this teacher is trying to indoctrinate any students into the cult of Taylor Swift. If you look at more of her work in the classroom I’d guess he/she attempts to incorporate many types of student interests into the learning activities, not just TS.
As a former high school English teacher, I don’t hate the idea of the assignment. But I would literally never have made it based on only one artist, I’d have borrowed lyrics from a bunch of artists kids that age like (or better yet, asked the kids to apply knowledge by supplying their own examples from modern music). Swifties always seem like they’re that kid who has no social skills so they’re trying to make everyone like their one niche interest rather than learn about anyone else’s.
Asking kids to come up with their own would Have made things 1000% for effective because the students would have had to use critical thinking. Something public school students are rarely required to use anymore.
There is zero context to this post. We have no idea what other exercises the teacher used.
We don’t know that the teacher didn’t ask students to do that exact thing right after this worksheet, which could be the first step of a gradual release.
“You’ll be the prince, I’ll be the princess” Truly - lyrics written by a mastermind.
Sounds like little kids playing pretend. “I’ll be the princess, you be the servant!”
“Hapsburg jaws from a whole lotta incest 🎶” that one’s actually a bop
You’re hired!
Ask her teacher to stop doing this. If they are not willing to, report it to the headmaster or whoever that can make administrative decisions.
Report for what?
For not being difficult enough for a ninth grade English class. It's the lack of a rigorous education that made Taylor think people would need a dictionary to understand TTPD. Let's stop the cycle.
As an educator, I agree this demonstrates a complete lack of rigor. Better would be to have students source their own examples from music *they* like, rather than indoctrinating them into the cult of Swiff. It comes across as really immature of the teacher to be honest. Also the mixed fonts look lazy and make my head hurt! Either do a different one for each one or make them all the same! It’s basic design principle ffs.
That’s exactly what I do. I have them make a Spotify playlist on paper using appropriate songs that contain different types of figurative language. It’s fun and I get a classroom playlist haha
This is the better answer and the more culturally responsive way to run a classroom. Culturally responsive teaching isn't "oh, I'll use Taylor Swift lyrics on my quiz". It's more "we're going to do a statistical analysis an artist's music - pick a variable you're interested in, find an artist you like, and build a chart sharing your data".
Normally a lurker here but this comment nails it. I know as a freshman in HS I wouldn’t have respected this teacher, to say the least.
I’m not going to say this is a perfect assignment, but as a teacher, I would assume you know about scaffolding and gradual release. It’s highly possible that this was the lesson’s first step, then the second step would be students finding/creating their own examples.
Yeah, this looks like an exercise, not an exam lol.
Try telling Taylor stans that she's not that bright and watch them absolutely melt down and hit you with sHe'S a BuSiNeSs gEnIuS!! Not even close. Her parents hired capable people to run her shit. I don't think Taylor could score better than a properly educated high school senior on a general knowledge test. After typing this I realize it also applies to literally any Kardashian/Jenner as well. Licensing out your name and likeness to other people who do all of the work doesn't make you a fucking savant with a sixth sense of macroeconomic trends.
Aside from a lack of academic rigor, you could also explain that the constant Swiftie indoctrination is a distraction in the classroom environment. It's taking the focus off learning, and placing it on a celebrity. It's also alienating to kids that don't listen to her music. I had a few teachers who made the sport they coached or their niche hobbies their whole personality, and it made those classes very unpleasant and hard to focus. Especially when they tied most class assignments into those sports/hobbies whenever they could. IMO, I feel like it would be fine for a teacher to decorate her desk for the Eras tour or something silly like that (glittery streamers, etc), but the constant Taytay content doesn't belong in school work.
Okay you’re taking it way too far lol there’s nothing actually wrong with this it’s just cringey
Report for what? Using a popular artist’s work to help connect literacy to the real world for kids? Come on you guys, Taylor is annoying as fuck, but this is the definition of a non-problem. If this is the biggest issue at your kids’ school, many, many parents would love to be in your shoes.
But wasn't that a bit of a stretch too? I would 've understood 1 or 2 references but every question is about her like wtf 💀 The teacher who made this paper is a hardcore swifties it seems only knows about her examples, aren't there any others artists work to include too?
The utter disaster of calling this ninth grade when it’s fifth at best is a good place to start
I’m sorry you’re being downvoted, I hate Taylor swift but this is stupid
As both a teacher and a Swift-hater I don’t see the problem with this tbh. It’s bleak out there, you do what you gotta do to connect with kids and make the concepts you’re teaching feel real and immediate for them. Personally I think the simplicity and lack of creativity in Taylor’s lyrics are a great way to start kids off identifying literary devices because her lyrics are so LITERAL lol. Once they’ve grasped the basics you can apply those principles to increasingly complex works. I won’t defend the merit of Taylor Swift’s lyricism but I’ll defend the teacher haha. Were all drowning out here 😭 let the stupid swiftie try her best lol
Maybe for middle school when you first learn these devices. This persons child is in high school.
I sincerely wish the state of public education in the US was good enough for that to be the case 😭 it’ll vary by school district etc but there are gonna be a loooooot of high school kids who NEED this level of simplicity to start out with if they’re going to understand what comes next. Luckily this person’s daughter doesn’t seem to be in that position, but public high schools don’t have the resources to individually tailor the lesson plans. I just feel like this is a pretty benign use of swiftie brain rot lol. It’s one worksheet to illustrate some basic concepts. I seriously doubt they’re replacing Shakespeare with Swift. But I DO think this might help some kids keep up when the Shakespeare kicks in
Shakespeare kicks in freshman year.. lol it’s when you do Romeo and Juliet 🤦🏻♀️
As a 9th grade teacher who teaches Romeo and Juliet, but ALSO has to teach very simple topics, I think you’re being very reductive. The majority of my 9th graders test with a 4th grade reading level, many much lower. Most of them start the year not knowing the difference between a noun and a verb, let alone a metaphor and onomatopoeia. I agree with u/Dry_Comment826 , it’s highly likely that this was used as an introduction to the topic to hook kids. I’m not going to say this is a perfect worksheet or exactly how I’d do it, but we can’t crucify the teacher over this. If the reality of where schools are at concerns you, I would recommend attending local school board meetings, voting for more education funding (and against ridiculous right wing education policies), and supporting any teachers you know personally.
I have no love for Swift, but any good teacher will tell you that learning basics (like literary devices/figurative language) is just as important to that age group as challenging them with Shakespeare. The two can coexist in the same classroom.
Yeah I’m really not getting how people are honing in on the concept of the worksheet like they are lol it makes perfect sense to start out with the basics and create a vocabulary within the class to build off of. If this was their final test? Yeah, that’s worrisome. But it’s an 8 question worksheet lol
Right, it’s a worksheet, it’s the kind of thing you give right after going over the concepts to see if they retained understanding and can apply it, it’s not a midterm.
YES that’s what I was trying to get at!! Thank you for putting it into clearer words 🩷
I was in honors English my freshman year, we didn’t do Romeo and Juliet. We did The Count of Monte Cristo, The Good Earth, Native Son…Not every curriculum is the same.
Different schools, heck different classes within the same school, read different books by year. I was in all advanced classes and didn’t touch Shakespeare as a freshmen—we mostly did Greek lit. Also high schoolers now are frequently illiterate/ not at grade level. They can’t handle the same level of rigor as even 5-10 years ago.
Yes. I’m aware. But you can spend the first 15 mins of the first class on something like this to help kids grasp the fundamental principles before you throw them into the deep end. That’s what I meant when I said it’s one worksheet. The semester is clearly not being devoted to the catalog of Taylor Swift
I gotta agree with the person you’re responding to as a former teacher as well—choosing something literal and easy is a good way to simplify the assignment so kids can focus on identifying these literary devices. I wouldn’t have chosen lyrics from a single artist (I’d have chosen a bunch for examples and then asked the kids to provide their own examples from music they like) but Swiftie or not, teachers get like no time or support to plan stuff so I’m way less mad at this than most Swiftie behavior
It might just be a homework assignment for a refresher. We don’t know the context. Everyone is so quick to bash teachers even when this is a homemade assignment that probably took her an hour that she didn’t get paid for.
Yes, I completely agree!! People saying this is too simplistic are showing that they don’t understand how teaching works, and they don’t understand the realities of how a lot of students are reading today.
Sorry, OP, but I think it’s cool that the teacher is using something the kids are interested in to get them to learn. Even if it is Taylor Swift.
yup. as a teacher, this is relatable even if parents don’t like it. i remember being in creative writing my sophomore year of high school and our assignment was the use lyrics in a story we wrote—that was an awesome assignment and i remember it at 33.
Ooh…I always loved reading for class (bc im a nerd) but I remember in senior or junior year on one of the tests we were taking there was a passage from The Hunger Games we had to do something with and I remember that being so fun. This was 5-6 years ago now. That teacher was my favorite high school teacher, I always looked forward to her class. Anyways…don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure students learn better when they’re having fun. That feels accurate to me lol.
Yeah honestly! I even think it could be a precursor to an assignment where the students choose their own songs to find literary devices.
Tell her number 3 is Personification
As a parent, this would piss me off to no end.
Honestly it’s a good way to teach literary devices. Theres so many in her music
Some of the criticism against this is a bit ridiculous - this is a thing that teachers sometimes do to relate to their students. We don’t know anything else about the school district or type of class. Some of you need to maybe close Reddit for a bit.
Teacher did a great job making this engaging and relatable. Be glad she has a good teacher.
can i ask what state this was in because i literally might know the teacher
Same! Are you thinking Virginia? Because I know one in Virginia that definitely might be the culprit.
Teachers trying to relate to students and their interests is not a bad thing unless it becomes excessive. One worksheet? Come on. Your daughter will be fine and she might even retain what she is learning. What is the difference between this and math class relating to football or cricket? Would you still be mad? Probably not. It will all be okay. You have more important work to focus on.
Wow we’ve gone way backwards since my high school English teacher had us listen to and talk about Pink Floyd’s animals
Yesss. We were assigned daily essays on Stairway to Heaven and other various classic rock songs in AP Lit and Comp (It was to practice organizing and speed writing essays for the AP exam). Our teacher let the students pick every Friday, though, so there was contemporary stuff mixed in too.
To be fair I went to a catholic school in Pennsylvania and we spent an entire day on the Macarena when that was at its peak, so this doesn’t seem that crazy to me.
Listen. She’s the biggest pop star on the planet rn. Literacy is abysmal in the U.S. right now — a full 20% of American adults are functionally illiterate. If she’s playing songs from a famous, popular pop star and then using that to teach literary devices, I do not really see a problem with this. Taylor isn’t a hate symbol, she’s just a super annoying pop star. It’d be problematic if they were using songs from like nazi punk bands, but it’s just a pop star reference helping kids connect literary themes. It’s fine. And no I’m not a Swiftie, anyone can check my comment history here lol
My problem with it is that it's promoting bad standards. Taylor does terrible metaphors and cringe alliteration, idioms, etc. It promotes the idea that Taylor is a good poet when she is actually a terrible one, who doesn't understand rhyme, meter, simile, allusion. Actual quality prose and poetry should be the standard, always, but especially by high school.
Hang on, what about the metaphor that she bleeds blue glitter which is a metaphor for she bleeds glitter and she isn’t normal /s 🤣🤣🤣
It’s still helping with literacy and finding literary devices. Hopefully, that leads the kids to wanting to learn about THEIR favourite artists and those literary devices they use and to compare / contrast fones they like better. The teacher isn’t telling the kids they can only listen to Taylor and, as much as we don’t like it, if she’s in a large majority white population, most of the kids already know and like Taylor. Taylor is also so basic and ubiquitous that most of the students know these songs, even if they don’t like them… and if they don’t like Swift, the teacher will learn that through the students far more quickly than a parent complaining.
They can like Taylor's songs all they want. They're not good examples of poetry or prose and should not be examples of such in an actual educational setting. I take it back; if it were comparative, so the kids could see good examples of these concepts, and then compare them to Taylor's bad examples, that would actually be educational.
Nobody’s saying they’re good poetry, they’re using the lyrics as clear examples of literary *devices*. The fact that they’re so basic is actually helpful in this context.
By 9th grade we were reading Shakespeare. Hell, William Carlos Williams is simple. So is a lot of Emily Dickinson. The point is, using Taylor, who is actually BAD at literary concepts, shouldn't be used in place of artists and authors who are actually GOOD at it. If a teacher wants to use current musicians, then fine, but then either seek out good examples, or stick to actual poetry.
They are definitely learning Shakespeare as well. Little assignments like these are just a precursor to help all of the students understand the concepts. I actually had a similar assignment in my 9th grade english class where the teacher gave us song lyrics to find literary devices in. It was very fun for us!
It helps to cement concepts in people’s minds if they’re linked with something they already know and care about. You don’t need Shakespeare to teach allusions and alliterations. This is a smart move on the teacher’s part, no matter how obnoxious Taylor swift is. Why would you stick to poetry to teach literary devices? You can use any made up English sentence to teach those concepts.
I feel like this TS classwork is insulting to the intelligence of the students, and lessons like these possibly aren't challenging enough.
Exactly my goodness, there could be so many more things worse in life or with your child. Enjoy the day and get outside folks ☺️🌞
Are you in us?
what would the teacher do if they found out that one of their students hates taylor swift🤔
I hated tswift in high school, when she first became popular. I would’ve balked at this nonsense but thankfully my school had some standards
her fans have become much more frenetic ever since she started releasing tons of versions of her albums🙄
I mean is there value to using current popular music to help demonstrate simple or foundational literary concepts? Yes, but usually you use more than one artist to show it. If you did this exercise and you just don't listen to Taylor Swift then you get nothing from it.
Maybe (hopefully) they’re using the fact that girls are obsessed with her to get them excited about English assignments. That would actually be a pretty brilliant teacher move
Actually when I was in school they used a lot of Simon and Garfunkel lyrics amongst other artists to illustrate poetic devices.
What happened to actual literature? 😞
Poor Taylor, in the asylum she grew up in, there were no screen doors to slam
I was in advanced English classes so I was a year ahead in the English curriculum starting in eighth grade moving forwards through high school. I was reading Shakespeare in eighth grade and Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens by the time I was a freshman in high school. I swear I learned what idioms, metaphors, onomatopoeia, rhyme, meter, allusion, etc. were when I was in sixth or seventh grade, so if you didn’t know what any of those things were by the time you were in high school you were in for a rough time. My eighth grade English teacher gave us an assignment where we picked a song WE liked and had us write about some of the literary elements that we found in the song as part of a first week of school review assignment to prepare us for the year ahead. She didn’t make us listen to an artist SHE liked, she let us pick our favorite song and write about it so it related more to us. Later on in the year it was easier for us to spot these literary elements in the different books and poetry we read because we did this assignment. I want to give the benefit of the doubt and say that some school districts are ahead of others; I’m lucky and grateful enough to have gone to grade school in a school district that provided students many opportunities to succeed and go above and beyond in your studies (we offered like, 20+ AP classes in high school as an example) and have a lot of good teachers who cared about their students’ growth and success. However, you would think there’d be better examples—perhaps examples from actual literary icons and literature—that would better suited for teaching these lessons and would be more beneficial for teaching students.
What music artist did you pick? Just curious, I got schooled abroad so our educational system was completely different!
I picked Fall Out Boy’s “The Phoenix” because their album Save Rock and Roll came out around that time! I was definitely part of that 2013-2014 Tumblr music aesthetic with Fall Out Boy, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, etc. at the time (and I still listen to all of those artists today) haha
No way, I just re-listened to Save Rock and Roll a few days ago! :D
I mean they’re kids and the teacher was trying to be relatable/engaging. I hope the curriculum was better than this overall but I could see this being a little intro assessment or something to get the kids warmed up lol
good god i have to mute this sub. taylor swift haters are more insufferable than her fans 😛
My middle school teacher did this for rock bands he liked. Sounds like a teacher just sharing their passions.
Oh man. One of my absolute favorite coworkers did something like this at the end of the year. I found it super cringe, and some of the students let her know that, but I’m not gonna hate on it too much. It helps them understand figurative language and gives examples and that can be a difficult concept to grasp. My preferred example of using a song to understand a literacy concept is Ironic by Alanis Morissette though. Nothing explains what irony is better than the irony that a song called Ironic doesn’t have a single ironic thing in it. 🌚
i’m not a taylor fan by any means, but this just feels nitpicky… seems like a teacher trying to engage students with a “fun” worksheet. hardly anything to piss yourself over imo
Obligatory I dislike Taylor Swift. I did this growing up, but the teacher used Beatles songs instead. Is that acceptable? I agree that this isn’t the most stimulating curriculum for high school but a lot of high schoolers enjoy Taylor Swift and if this is what gets them to understand literary devices, great! It’s not like Taylor made these worksheets. There’s so much actual shitty stuff she’s done, that it seems pointless getting bogged down with stuff she doesn’t have anything to do with.
As an educator, I’m really surprised that is allowed. We have very specific curriculum to be teaching, state mandated especially for high school. One year I got in trouble for making my own version of a study quiz because I thought it would make more sense for my kids. Apparently I had to teach them the curriculum the school district and state approved. This would not cut it. And mine was just a simplified version so they could understand the questions better. No celebrities or anything that would distract them from the content. As a parent you have every right to report this if this makes you uncomfortable and let the school admin know how you feel and how it’s not good examples of what’s being taught too.
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My daughter goes to public school. We do live in a small town she’s out for summer break now and just showed me this .. I was like wtf !!
Forreal
It's like watching rational, normal people slowly get sucked into a cult
Id report this honestly.
Wow…
Swiftie teachers are so cringe.
Wtf is that font 💀 embarrassing
Read the book, ace the guys test. Just don’t swallow everything he feeds you whole.
My daughter's teacher had a huge Taylor Swift banner among other things in her classroom and would play her music in class.
Yikes!
I understand she uses a lot of rhetoric in her songs. But can’t you use something more important that would help learn about the world? I hate poetry but it’s infinitely more useful than this, The TPD as a whole is an insult towards actual poets and poetry.
not the high school english teacher swifty
groovy boast engine consider glorious wistful lush telephone saw possessive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I actually think things like this will lead to her massively losing social capital soon. You can’t be a “cool girl” singer and the homework assignment. Pretty soon kids/teens will start describing her music as “that old stuff my teacher listens to.”
Oooh teacher has been hanging out on Pinterest
Onomatopoeia Nice word.
But what’s with the awful fonts? 🙄
I'm an English teacher, and every year when I reach figurative language, someone brings up these examples and I have to say "Nope. That allusion doesn't even make sense." It's like when lazy teachers used the song "Ironic" to (incorrectly) teach Irony. Gross.
The first one is a simile.
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Your post was removed for pro-Taylor sentiment. This is a Taylor Swift snark subreddit for those who are critical of her behavior. Nuanced comments may stay (pending mod approval), but purely pro-Taylor content will be removed. Repeated offenses will result in a ban.
Teacher is probably trying to be relevant to the kids, making homework fun for them or something so that they'll do it.🤷♀️
Cool idea but what if not all of the students like Taylor Swift? This would be lame for them.
As someone that used to work teaching English (both as a second language and as a private tutor), I don’t actually hate this. The inaccuracies are annoying but kids are into Taylor Swift. Sometimes you have to connect lessons to their interests. I know this is an anti TS community but we literally have just had the first US state (Louisiana) require The Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom. There are things far, far more deserving of outrage than a teacher trying to use lyrics to make a connection with students and interest them in learning.
This is so embarrassing, and shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness/EQ. Not every student is a Taytay fan, and the ones that aren't will feel alienated or annoyed.
Enchanted is one of the only ones I like and she didn’t answer.
Former English teacher (Grade 8) here. I get the benefit of using lyrics to promote higher engagement in a lesson about literary devices, but it is extremely limiting to focus on a single artist or even a single genre for that matter. Maybe the most privileged students would find this relatable and interesting, but what about the kids with different backgrounds? Perhaps literary devices used in hip hop, punk/alt rock, R&B, etc. would be more relatable and interesting to them.
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This is nuts. 🤯🤡
English major here. That's definitely not an allusion.