A South Florida eighth grade English teacher of The Charter Schools of Boynton Beach has been suspended (only for three days) after assigning Lil Wayne lyrics as part of an homework assignment to her students.
One of the parents, Vanessa Guzman expressed her disapproval and anger over the assignment which asked the students to underline examples of figurative language in Lil Wayne’s Cory Gunz-assisted “6 Foot 7 Foot” lyrics.
“This is crazy,” Guzman said in a WPTV report. “They shouldn’t be giving this to kids in school…I’m uncomfortable reading any of this…They shouldn’t be teaching this stuff in school for language arts. I mean, who in their right mind would give kids something like this?”
The school headmaster, Wayne Owens, spoke on the matter with a statement.
“The lesson was for students to learn to identify literary devices,” Owens said. “The teacher had already introduced Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare. Students were having difficulty grasping the concepts of literary devices such as: pun, simile, metaphor, so the teacher used colloquial material. This material did not meet the school’s standards and was not approved. The teacher recognizes that it was totally inappropriate for a school assignment.”
Guzman understands why the teacher felt motivated to use something she believed would be more down to earth to the students, but still holds that it is “not appropriate at all.”