Pennsylvania teacher uses Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake it Off’ to teach students multiplication
- A math teacher used a Taylor Swift track to teach his young students their multiplication by eight table which he set to the sound of Shake It Off
- The teacher projected new lyrics using numbers instead of words for them to sing
A Pennsylvania math teacher may want to switch to teaching music after he was caught on camera using a catchy Taylor Swift song to teach students math.
Mr. C decided to use the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s 2014 hit Shake It Off to teach his youngsters how to count by eight while learning their multiplication tables at Hanover Elementary School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The educator who teaches the primary school managed to cleverly insert the numbers where the lyrics would normally be – and the children could be heard singing enthusiastically.
The math teacher, known as @teachwithmrc online, projected revised song lyrics onto the whiteboard for the children to recite – and it seemed to work, displaying the results on his TikTok account.
A math teacher used a Taylor Swift track to teach his young students their multiplication by eight table which he set to the sound of Shake It Off
The teacher projected new lyrics using numbers instead of words for them to sing
“I can count to eight – I have so many in my head!” the song begins.
“8, 16, 24, mmmm”, sing the children in harmony.
’32, 40 but wait…there’s also 48. 56 and 64 mmmhmm.
Whatever the content, the message is in the delivery and it seems to work.
“My students are so excited for the Eras tour in Philadelphia with Taylor Swift. They are hoping this version of Shake it off count by 8 will go viral and Taylor will see this one,’ the teacher wrote.
Taylor Swift, a native of nearby Redding, Pennsylvania, was in town last week after playing three dates at Lincoln Financial Field.
Of course, the difficulty for children who learned math in the MC class may well come when they find themselves singing during their upcoming exams instead of trying to solve math problems silently.
@teachwithmrc, a special education teacher at Pennsylvania Elementary School, seemed to love her young students as she sang the song to Swift’s lyrics
The teacher’s TikTok account sees him teaching various lessons using famous songs
Taylor Swift, a native of Redding, Pennsylvania, was in town last week after playing three dates at Lincoln Financial Field
Mr. C has also gone viral for his math teaching videos involving other Swift hits including Trouble and Anti-Hero, as well as songs from artists including the Backstreet Boys, N’Sync and Adele.
Mr. C’s real name is Sean Connolly, and he’s based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he’s a special education teacher in the local district.
Connolly, who holds a master’s degree in education from Wilkes University, has been teaching for 15 years.
“I have been a learning support educator for 15 years. I quickly learned that every textbook program purchased by a district requires the learning support/intervention teacher to reinvent the wheel to reach struggling students,” Connolly writes on her website.
In an interview with We are teachers, Connolly said he found the method of using songs when he first discovered TikTok.
“I realized I could do a lot with the TikTok short video format. Then I came up with the idea of a Count by 9 method using the Backstreet Boys song ‘I Want It That Way.’ ‘posted on a Friday night. In the morning it had 2,000 views and by the end of the day it was almost 100,000 views,’ he said.
In the same interview, Connolly said that even Taylor Swift liked one of her videos. He added that he had no musical training and that his favorite Swift hit was Shake it Off.
