New Orleans Teacher Remixes Beyonce Song to Teach Math Lesson
Ciera Paul remixed "Formation" to teach a geometry lesson to her students.
— -- One Louisiana teacher is helping her students get their grades in "formation" with a little help from Beyoncé.
Ciera Paul, a seventh-grade math teacher at ReNEW Cultural Arts Academy in New Orleans remixed Beyoncé’s hit "Formation," changing the lyrics to teach a math lesson to her charter school students.
The song teaches a geometry lesson, and includes clever lyrics such as, “I’m so crazy with my circular measurements. Pi times diameter gives me the circumference. I’m so reckless every time I square radius. I multiply it times Pi to get the area."
"Geometry matters down in Louisiana. Remix these lyrics with vocab because math matters,” the remix continues.
Paul told ABC News that she had always joked about remixing a song for the class lesson, but hadn't gotten around to actually doing it before the Beyoncé remix. The math teacher came up with the idea for a "Formation" remix on a whim, and whipped up the math-related lyrics fairly quickly.
"One Sunday night while I was at home, Beyoncé’s ‘Formation’ came on the radio, and I thought to myself, 'I bet they're going to like this song,'" Paul said.
Paul, 26, spent about 30 minutes writing up new lyrics to the song, and presented the lesson to her class Monday morning, with some students even reciting a portion in Spanish.
"They were all just like this is so fun; this is so awesome," Paul said of her students’ reactions to the math lesson.
Paul revealed that the class practiced the song for about five minutes a day over a two-week period, and by the fourth lesson, the students had already memorized the song and were able to perform it off the top of their heads.
Paul's creative teaching method is paying off. The teacher said that through fun and interactive lessons such as making a math lesson into a song, not only have some students’ grades risen, she's also seen an increase in participation in lower-level students, who weren't as invested in the lessons as they are now.
"This is just an interesting way to change it up a little bit and get away from the traditional teaching methods of just pens and paper," Paul said.
"It's just something out of the box that the kids can relate to. The kids are looking for something that’s fun and enjoyable, and adding a little song or dance makes [the lesson] more memorable for them," she continued.
Paul said she is blown away by the response that her math lesson has received. After posting the video of the "Formation" math remix online, it was picked up by various media pages, and has been viewed over 1 million times collectively.
While the video is bringing accolades and commendation to the math teacher from the public, Paul revealed that the best part about all othis for her is how excited the kids are about the lesson.
"I never expected it to be what it is now," she said.
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