When it comes to instructing teenagers, a teacher knows how to get their attention: pop culture.
High school English class just got far more engaging.
When it comes to teaching teenagers, Mr. Mooney certainly knows how to get their attention.
NPR created a short video about Mr. Mooney (included for your viewing pleasure below), a New Jersey high school teacher who runs his English classes in a very modern way. And one of his strategies just garnered him and his students a lot of attention.
Mr. Mooney taught a lesson using rapper Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly" album.
"To Pimp a Butterfly," released in early 2015, has been critically acclaimed for its depth and social commentary. And it debuted in the #1 spot on on the Billboard 200, a fact his freshman English class was well aware of.
So Mr. Mooney used some of the songs to convey lessons to his students about literature, including Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye."
Image by Mr. Mooney, shared by NPR.
He then wrote a blog post about the lesson that found its way to Kendrick Lamar himself. The artist read it and was impressed — enough to come visit the school and Mr. Mooney's students.
When Lamar came to the school, he said he could see and feel the students' energy.
GIF by NPR.
And that's because Mr. Mooney is doing the teaching thing quite well.
There are lots of ways to reach students, and Mr. Mooney found an effective one.
Image by NPR.
Mr. Mooney certainly isn't the first to use pop culture to make a lesson more interesting. These days, it's almost a must to make education relevant. But what he and a growing handful of other educators from elementary schools to colleges all over the world have figured out is that using art and culture isn't just about making a lesson "cool" or "interesting."
Bringing hip-hop into the classroom validates and shows an appreciation for a diversity of art forms — and respects the very culture that the students themselves create and consume.
Mr. Mooney points out how the demographics of our country and classroom are becoming more and more diverse, so we need to really examine what we deem worthy of study. And so far, that strategy is proving very effective.
Students are grabbing onto the lessons and showing a lot of interest.
"We kind of teamed together and put together this class called Hip Hop Lit," explains one student. "Teaching about African-American struggle and sexism, but through hip hop music, is really awesome."
"We dissect album covers, dissect advertisements, go through songs, and we dissect the literature of the songs," says another.
Image by one of Mr. Mooney's students, shared by NPR.
Inspiring, right?
We're so used to hearing about education focusing on the wrong things, like high-stakes testing. It's a nice (and inspiring) change to see a teacher truly reach his students.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.