Michael Andrejkovics is a high school math teacher in the Northport-East Northport Union Free School District who, for the past five years, has been writing and performing math-themed raps and song parodies with and for his students. This creative teaching tool started as a way to offer extra credit and get students more interested in the material. To further incentivize them, he offered to write one as well.
“The idea of their teacher rapping was apparently ridiculous enough to motivate them and I found myself in the uncomfortable predicament of having to write and perform a rap in front of my students,” Andrejkovis said. “Well, despite great trepidation on my part, the rap was received incredibly well by my class.”
That same year, inspired by their teacher, a group of three boys in the class produced a parody to the Beastie Boys classic "Paul Revere." Andrejkovis posted videos of that performance as well as his own on YouTube. Both videos proved to be widely popular and the project took off.
“I have created a new rap every year since then, with the brave and creative among my students creating their own as well, and it has sort of taken on a life of its own,” the math teacher said. “Recently I've taken to creating full-blown music videos for my raps and performing them live for the entire school on the last day of classes.“
His YouTube channel has all of his videos as well as some by students from throughout the years:
You can view Andrejkovis’ most recent rap here: http://www.youtube.com/user/MikeDobbs76?feature=mhee
And Andrejkovis’ all-time favorite student video can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPi2mJTq_4A
(Michael Andrejkovics is is member of United Teachers of Northport)