The surreal life

One of the projects I'm currently working on in class is a poetry unit where we are examining the lyrics of rock and pop songs. Not the most original idea I know, but it's a good way to introduce concepts such as simile, metaphor, alliteration and irony - none of which are all that familiar to my students - and so far everything seems to be going well. It also allows me to go off on Dead Poets Society style tangents, although I haven't had any students standing on desks yet and referring to me as their Captain. Give it time though...

I started out with Eleanor Rigby, standard fare in a project such as this, and we've also listened to If You Could Read My Mind, a heartfelt song by Gordon Lightfoot that those of you in the UK might remember from Trigger Happy TV. I like to branch out on left field limbs as well though, and I also had my students listen to Empire State Human by The Human League today, which I'm pretty certain has never hit the airwaves north of 60 before. It was quite a surreal experience to see my Inuit students listening to a piece of seminal late seventies British synthpop but they seemed to like it, and I'm now planning the next instalment of my lyrical mystery tour.

Ernie The Fastest Milkman In The West, perhaps...?