Florida Teacher Inspires Kids to Learn Long Division With Song

"If school’s not fun for them, it’s not fun for me either," she said.

ByABC News
December 16, 2016, 4:49 PM

— -- One Florida teacher is using a catchy song to teach her 4th-graders long division.

The innovative teaching technique is hitting a home run with Nadine Ebri’s students and the internet, with her video of two kids singing and dancing while working out a math problem racking up a whopping 13 million views.

“I’m just like my kids. I get bored really easily,” Ebri, a teacher at La Core Christian Elementary School in Jacksonville, told ABC News. “If school’s not fun for them, it’s not fun for me either. When you integrate stuff you love, and [the stuff] the kids love into your lessons, it's very rewarding for all of us.”

She said her class wasn’t trying to make a song, but it just happened naturally.

“I was going through the steps of the long division, and one of my students started beating on the desk,” Ebri recalled. “I was like ‘divide, multiply and subtract,’ and then it was like, ‘bring it on down’ and ‘bring it on back’ and we started adding stuff to it from there and it just stuck.”

Joyce Williams, the school’s executive director, said she is “so very proud” of Ebri and the students.

“She’s done an awesome job with those children,” Williams said. “They love coming to school. They love learning. She’s very innovative, very creative. She has made that connection with them. We had to get her an assistant because we had so many students in her class and none wanted to be transferred out.”