Florida teacher helps students learn with song parodies

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (NewsNation) — A fourth-grade school teacher from St. Augustine uses the power of music to help her students learn.

Marlee Christianson has been teaching math and science for seven years but has recently gone viral on TikTok, reaching millions of views for her pop song parodies that help her students learn lesson plans quicker.

Christianson said she started making parodies when she attended a summer teacher camp where she was introduced to different teaching strategies.

“I started writing songs that weren’t popular a little bit before. But in 2019 was when I wrote the hallway song. I believe whenever ‘Truth Hurts’ was really popular, that’s when I wrote it,” Christianson said.

She created song lyrics about math and science to go with tunes by recognizable artists like Taylor Swift, Lizzo and Kid Cudi — who even commented on the parody of his song “Day ‘n’ Nite.”

Since she introduced this teaching style to the classroom, Christianson said she noticed their grades improved and she can actually hear the kids humming the songs while taking tests to help them remember the answers.

“It takes me a little while to write out the content that I want them to know and find a song that works,” Christianson said it takes her only about half an hour to create a new song parody.

She said she has written songs about concepts like decimals, the Earth’s rotation, atmosphere layers and even the sun’s rotation. Other teachers in her school have even asked her for the lyrics to her parodies so that they could use them in their classes.

Christianson said it only takes her students about two sessions to memorize the lyrics.

“When we are in class, I sing it first and then we go line by line and then like verse by verse,” she said.

Since she’s been teaching through music, her students have started requesting songs for new lessons, but Christianson said she is not taking their requests because the requested songs are usually rap songs, saying it’s too hard.

Watch Marlee Christianson’s full interview in the video player above.