CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This is not the sixth grade you and I remember.
At Ridge Road Middle School in Charlotte, they're using music to get kids engaged. So much so, that one of the teachers has created raps and music videos of lesson plans.
It doesn't feel like a classroom, but listen closely: it's a teacher in the sunglasses and the lyrics are lesson plans.
"It just kind of hit me. 'Okay, I can't get them any other way,'" said Claire Tamayo.
This is only Tamayo's second year as a teacher, and her raps have the whole social studies team at Ridge Road standing on their desks, rarely sitting in the chairs. She says she realized it during her first year of teaching last year when observing her students interacting with each other.
"Communicating through music," Tamayo said. "They were dancing, these things that would ordinarily get you in trouble if you were in the middle of a lesson doing this."
The entire block is an all-out sprint-- never a dull moment, and the kids love it.
"They're still really excited about coming in and being a part of it," Tamayo said. "And that gets me even more excited."
Tamayo even creates music videos, like one on the continents, modeled after Justin Bieber's "What do you mean?", and one on democracy in Greece. She says it takes her around 15 hours outside of school to write each rap start to finish, but it's worth every minute.
"Truth be told, this is just the way I want to teach," Tamayo said.