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Staff writer

Most people would never image that the French Revolution and Sir-Mix-A-lot’s “Baby Got Back” would have anything to do with each other.

But in St. Francis High School social studies teacher Ted Gehring’s classes, they do.

The 120 students in Gehring’s five modern world history classes learned about France’s economic hardships, starvation, the excess of the nobility and the peasant uprising by putting it to music.

The classes followed the revolution from 1789 through the era of Napoleon Bonaparte. The unit ended with 1814, shortly after Napolean’s army was defeated in Russia.  

Teaching nearly 600 years of modern world history can be a challenging task, Gehring said.

Last spring, Gehring and fellow social studies teacher Tim McLean devised a way of having students learn historical facts in a way that combines the teachers’ love of drama and music as well as making it fun – composing songs.

“We realized that between the two of us combined, we were teaching five sections of modern world history to nearly 150 students. This meant we had the ability to truly do something unique if we combined our classes for a multi-class review project,” Gehring said.

The pair picked the French Revolution and adjusted the curriculum.

By having the students pick a modern song and create lyrics describing the events of the French Revolution helps them retain the facts, Gehring said.

Each student group  reworked their favorite song, added choreography, planned costumes and then recorded themselves performing their song.  

Senior Brittany Luesse thought doing the songs was a little different.

But she was willing to try. “I like music,” she said.

The students were divided into groups of five and given a category.

The songs covered the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Era.  

Luesse’s group picked Jordan Sparks’ “Battlefield” for the defeat of Napoleon’s grand army in Russia.

Doing the song made it easier to learn the facts, Luesse said.

“It’s different than doing the note guide,” she said.

When it came time for the test, all she had to do was think of the song, Luesse said.

Although she is not good at taking tests, “I did pretty good,” she said.

While the songs helped her remember the chronological order of the event, Luesse said she prefers the traditional way of learning.

Senior Shauney Moen was a little nervous about the assignment.

“I’m not the most musically talented person,” she said.

Moen was also in Luesse’s group.

Fellow student Ellie Perleberg suggested “Battlefield” and touched up the lyrics the whole group came up with, Moen said.

“This year’s seniors were extremely creative,” Gehring said.

Ranked among the class favorites were: General Lafayette and the People’s Army played to the tune of “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, the rise of Napoleon played to the tune of “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, Robespierre’s Reign of Terror played to the tune of “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, and the defeat of Napoleon’s Grand Army played to the tune of Jordan Spark’s “Battlefield.”

Gehring took all of the student videos and created “The French Revolution – The Musical,” which the students watched before the unit test.

The video also including  songs created by McLean and Gehring.

“We would never ask our students to do something that we would not do ourselves. McLean wrote the opening scenes to the tunes of “Happy Birthday,” “Jingle Bells” and “Do-Re-Mi” and we sang these songs to the kids,” Gehring said.  

It was fun to see everyone in class trying to sing the songs and she enjoyed seeing what each group came up with, Moen said.

It also helped Moen on her test.

As Moen was taking the test, she would remember the songs.  

Watching the video helped her put events in order, Moen said.

“It was a good idea. (The information) sticks in people’s minds more,” she said.

”The songs make it easier to learn.”

“I scored higher on my test than I expected,” Moen said.

When McLean and Gehring did the unit last spring, the last trimester students scored higher than the two previous trimester classes did when tested on the French Revolution, according to Gehring.

“The kids liked doing a it and had fun. They (also) remembered more of it,” he said.

“It is amazing what kids can accomplish when they focus, work together and don’t take themselves too seriously.”

Tammy Sakry is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it