applause

I had a student who was extremely shy and reserved around me. In the beginning we were struggling to find the way to each other. The classes were enjoyable, for both teacher and student, but there was always a bit of awkwardness in the air. He was not relaxed, no matter what I tried, and this made me nervy too. Slowly, however, I discovered he simply adored pop culture. Suddenly I saw a way! I started to incorporate more and more films, songs, and stories of celebrities into the various tasks and topics I wanted to cover. Lady Gaga, was, for example, one of our favorites. We did jigsaw puzzles with her lyrics, performative situational dialogues with her personas, and analytic discussions of her clips and songs, touching upon themes from gender roles,  through violence, to contemporary culture and manipulation. After a couple of months, we became quite fond of these meetings and regretted that the course had to end eventually.

A couple of months after I stopped tutoring him, I sent him a short email to catch up on how his life was going. Just out of fun, I signed the letter as Beyonce, as a reference to 'Telephone', one of the videos we analyzed together. Two days later, this is what I received from this once-unresponsive guy:

Hi Beyoncé
omg + thanks for writing me! how ru? ur featuring in telephone was so fuckin gr8!!! had amazing days together! I hope you enjoyed it the way I did honey. LOVE performin sou mach ya kno'. what u think of my new songs? #APPLAUSE #VENUS #MANiCURE you think are full of S.E.X? HOPE SO! S.E.X is A.R.T.!!! can't wait for your opinion. #DoWhatUWantAtMidnight

Lady Gaga

Beyonce fan

If I had success in my teaching career, this is definitely one. Way to go, Lady Gaga*!


* The color of the text pays tribute to Lady Gaga's favorite shades according to her wiki.