Popular Music in the Classroom

I'm not sure how often this happens in an elementary school classroom but I know that it happens in Middle and High School classrooms. The students have some work to do, perhaps a project, and so they ask if they can listen to music. The teacher doesn't mind, especially since she knows that kids sometimes work harder when they are more comfortable so she allows one of the students to hook their ipod up to the speaker system. The teacher is busy circulating the classrooom helping where she is needed and pushing those kids who need a bit of pushing. Some of the songs that play she has heard before and some are new to her.

Some of the songs are dance, pop, and even rap. She doesn't give it much though until she begins to listen a little more closely and catches a word here and there. She hears "ho" and "bitch" and realizes the students aren't aware of the words they are even listening to. She tells the students that the music is inappropriate for a school classroom and despite the groaning of the kids she turns the music off and replaces it with one of her own classical CDs. The students complain for a minute or two but with the new music they settle down and get back to their project work.

This teacher was lucky....as it could have been much worse. This post
http://thedreamteacher.blogspot.com/2008/03/am-i-just-too-old-to-crank-it.html
shares the story of a teacher who listened to Soulja Boy's Crank It and even let the students teach her a dance. She was so proud that she was learning something new and gaining a different connection with her middle school students until her 24 year old son found out what song she was dancing to. He points her to the UrbanDictionary.com website for her to look up some of the words in the song to see what the "common" meaning of the words are. The teacher is more than embarrassed.

I am a music lover and certainly have let kids play music in the classroom while working or have given the kids the chance to use their own music for their powerpoint projects that might benefit from music. However, before I do this I always type the name of the song in Google followed with the word lyrics. I'm not sure why, but there are thousands of websites that feature just lyrics. Skim through them to make sure you know what is being said and if you don't know what a word means then put that in Google as well. Or you could just say that you the teacher get to play full time DJ.