but I once got a class of 11 year-olds to learn and sing along to Van and The Chieftains' version of 'I'll Tell Me Ma'. One of the very few successful moments in a generally traumatic experience of teacher training.

*shudders*

I was 11. The only part I can remember is miming the line "down the barrel of a gun".

We also did Mars from Holst's Planet suite.

I was 11, Sergeant Pepper had just been released.

At morning assembly, the headmaster played "She's leaving home".

Why ? I didnt know then, & I dont know now.

Was he trying to be a "groovy" teacher ? I dont have a clue, but I just remember sniggering & feeling really embarassed.

Lots to choose from, but I'm particularly fond of two numbers I organised, both in a special needs primary school nativity play:

Shepherds plodding through the wilderness to the children singing Steve Earle's "Pilgrim" (School bus driver on plaintive harmonica).

Lots of infants dressed up as one many-humped camel dancing around to Jonathan Richman's "Egyptian Reggae".

[Sorry, just realised you wanted embarrassing situations.I'll think on.]

To a couple of things - particularly in an essay I wrote analysing some of the similarities of chord patterns between Radiohead and the Beatles (Karma Police's chorus with Sexy Sadie for example)

Here in New Zealand (and I'm sure elsewhere) many primary school kids start the day with Jump Jam - basically an aerobics work-out for juniors. When my offspring started there and I was told about this I had nightmares about them line-dancing to a Taylor Swift track but fortunately the teacher who runs it has a decent taste in music and his choices are eclectic to say the least.
So, this morning for example I watched 300 kids going absolutely bananas in the schoolyard to this:

Sorry, but I'm not going to be able to read this thread without seeing Ricky Gervais in the training day episode of the Office. The whole of the Word Massive is going to be Ricky Gervais in my head now, a bit like the scene in Being John Malkovich....

It's 1967 and Morning Assembly has just come to an end. As was customary, we all exited to some music played on the organ by the music teacher - young-ish and trendy-ish. This particular morning in early June, he had chosen a piece of Bach. We cool dudes at the back instantly recognise it as being the inspiration - musically at least - for Procul Harum's magnum opus.

So instead of rushing for the exit and the first lesson of the day, we stay seated and appreciate the music. Imagine the music teacher's surprise when he finishes and turns round to find about a dozen of us still in the hall.

Of course, we were late for class. As I say, then it felt cool; now it's just embarrassing!

... but back in the day when I had to go to mass regularly, our church ditched the organ and got a bunch of folkies and tambourine bashers in in an attempt to be less formal and a bit more modern.

One of their earliest triumphs was a self penned hymn which began "Lord Jesus, I gave you my heart...."

Even as a ten year old I knew that this was lame.

At one of my previous schools (as a teacher), I was the lead guitarist in the staff band who were called, variously, "Behaviour For Learning", "Pupils Of Concern" and "The Non-Negotiables" - all of which are teaching in-jokes (and in at least a couple of cases very school-specific ones).

Every autumn term, the kids held an performance extravaganza containing mostly banghra dancing, street dance, tiny eleven year old blonde girls singing Mariah Carey ballads with their usually rain-butt sized best friends, and pretty talented indie kids doing stuff like Regina Spector and Muse to general incomprehension.

Anyway, one year, we decided to join in. Cue me having an excuse to throw "hilarious" rock star shapes and play widdly solos, my tone deaf mate Johnnie to below tunelessly into a microphone, and all the attractive lady teachers to do borderline-inappropriate dancing and backing vocals.

It should have been embarrassing, and possibly was to any adult watching. We had the BEST time, however, and repeated it for the following five years. Largely because the kids went INSANE with excitement: it was balm to the soul for the likes of me, who spent a decade playing gigs in toilets to eight people.

I wrote a story in which Ned's Atomic Dustbin appeared.

Our teacher, while getting us to read Toni Morrison's Beloved, used to play jazz music so we could appreciate the jazz rhythms embedded within and blues records/ Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley to appreciate the horrors of the slave trade

Some time in the 70s, school assembly was on the subject of classical music. The teacher played us Rick Wakeman's keyboard solo off that Yes triple album as an example of classical music being brought up to date. It scarred me for life, to the extent that I ended up buying it to confront the memory.

He probably wanted to play Siberian Khatru instead, really.

my one attempt at A Music Lesson involved telling my class of 7 year olds to close their eyes while I played them Primal Scream 'Inner Flight'. I asked them to describe any pictures they could see, to go with the music, and got 'space', 'heaven' and 'angels' from 'em.

Think I also tried 'Albatross' and 'Moby Dick...

*EDIT* Actually, thinking about it, this was the coolest, least embarassing lesson I ever taught as a Primary School teacher....

I was in a school production of the 15th century morality play "Everyman". We did one of the longer speech sections as a rap. It was great.

In my twenties I taught English as a foreign language to business men and women. Music on cassette was a great tool - Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner, for example, was excellent for teaching the Present Continuous (I am sitting in the morning, I am waiting at the counter, etc). Cher's Turn Back Time is pretty much all you need to know about the 2nd conditional.

This kind of things went down pretty well so I found a way to fuck it up. I started bringing my guitar in and doing it live - except that I'd play songs I liked rather than those with any educational value. So I'd have 12 Japanese chaps in suits furrowing their brows as they struggled to comprehend why Sup up your beer and collect your fags, there's a row going on down near Slough was a useful phrase for boardroom negotiations.

Businessman 1: Well, you certainly drive a hard bargain, Mr Yakamoto.
Businessman 2: And some of the lads say they'll be back next week!

They all enjoyed the "Hello, hooray HAH!" bit, though.

I got roped into something fairly cringe-inducing in the role of chief button-presser. The head of the school was addressing an assembly and, after he'd quoted a few lyrics from the song in "inspirational" mode, I had to step forward and press the play button to start up Robbie Williams' "Millenium".

I'm not being sniffy about the music per se, as it would have worked as part of a student-led assembly, but all it inspired was a lot of intense gazing at footwear and floor from nearly everyone - except the aforementioned head.

One of my classmates when 12 was called Richard Crawley. Not notably badly behaved but noisy. In a Pete'n'Dud dialogue stylee, he left soon after for Birkenhead, possibly due to this very story which I am about to relate.

It was a junior teacher's turn to do the weekly school assembly and it went along the lines of - "well we all know Richard. And the name of this song by Simon and Garfunkle is a bit like Richard's name. And, you know, the message of this song is that its important to you know, think about the important things in life. I apologise in advance for the sound quality". Plays tape...

I'm actually blushing to think of the sheer embarrassing horror of the lameness and unsatisfactory nature that moment - it was 1976 or so, the song was a decade or more old...

Mrs F-C can still perform I Want Your Love in its entirety.

A friend of mine was a TEFL teacher in Spain and used to play the class Something Stupid by Frank & Nancy Sinatra and Moonlighting by Leo Sayer as typical examples of how one uses the English language on an everyday basis.

Got it from my friends as a birthday present. Being on the School Social Committee (it was either that or hockey), we were getting the Assembly Room ready for the Summer Dance and thought we'd play it 'to test the new sound system'

Of course it was on repeat play as was our wont with new 45s in the olden days. Except it went out over the new tannoy system into every classroom. It took a while for the janitor to work out what had happened, but we were heroes for just one day.

Does that count as an educational context?

we were studying 'A Handmaids Tale' by Margaret Atwood. Not the most cheery book by any means so me & my friend decided to try & get as many beatles lyrics/titles into essays as we could.

It all started well with subtle references to 'a day in the life' of Offred & questioning how they could 'let it be'? etc. etc.
I think i might have got away with it if I had not finished an essay with 'and with a love like that, you know you should be glad'

I had to re-do a full terms work because the teacher would not accept any of my essays!! Still worth it though, I felt I should have at least got some extra marks!

When I was a student a friend recorded me drunkenly singing Matt McGinn's classic song in the folk idiom "The Sugery Cake and Candy Man." He then gave this recording to a Spanish friend who was an English teacher. He was so amused by my tuneless yelping that he used to play it to his students to demonstrate how accents differ throughout the UK. I have no idea what students thought when they were played a tape of a drunk Glasweigan student singing this...

used to take the older pupils to see bands - Led Zeppelin at Earls Court, for example. Sadly I was too young to go. He also used to play Ian Dury and the Blockheads records in English class and discuss the lyrics with us. We all found Fucking Ada terribly amusing for some reason.

Just this week I received a DVD containing 7 animations done to Stackridge songs, many by school children as part of school projects. Wish I could have done this sort of thing when I was a lad but of course DVDs had not been invented. Come to think of it, electricity was still fairly new. Aye.

Purple Spaceships Over Yatton

I had to do a presentation in my first year at Uni, on a subject *something* (I can't quite remember exactly *what*) to do with how we inappropriately use animals in language: e.g. we'll call somebody a dog as an insult, when in fact most of us believe dogs to have strong, positive characteristics.

I played a CD of The Beatles 'Piggies', and came up with some half-baked analysis of the lyrics in the context of the Manson family murders (they daubed "death to pigs" on Sharon Tate's walls).

I'd suppressed that memory until now. Mortifying.

but I sang songs in my head a lot when I was at school, so no Mr Teacher I wasn't listening. I once sang the whole of The Jams "Setting Sons" in my head to fill the time during a French exam. I could only answer 2 questions and got 7%, pretty embarrassing.

believer that the learning process should continue into adulthood and be a constant companion, extending into the work place if possible.

My belief in this has only been tested once:

I feel embarrassed just knowing that this video exists.

It takes place sometime in the late 1970s when I was attending primary school. This school was situated just a few hundred yards from a teacher training college, and consequentially we got quite a few of their students in either doing placements or short projects.

One day the whole year was invited into the school hall to take part on the project of one of these students. It was a 'movement to music' type of thing - we had to pretend to be Red Indians whilst dancing to appropriate music on her cassette player. So what music did we have? It was the entirely inappropriate "In Zaire" by Johnny Wakelin. Even then I knew the song was about a boxing match featuring Mohammed Ali.

O level Physics Bury Grammar School 1972. Our teacher kept playing Chicory Tip to illustrate something about sound modulation and frequency distortion. I believe that's the boffinry behind synthesisers. At least it served to illustrate. Our Englih teacher, Mr Sinker, played Family to us for no discernable reason. Put me off reading for years.

My old school (garammar when I was interned there, now minor public) had House assemblies on a Wednesday and somehow I eneded up as one of the organisers of said events when in the 6th form. So we would have a reading or some music followed by the usual short prayer and notices about sports etc. Our house masters were fairly comfortable about what we did, thinking back one of them was probably only mid-twenties and had relatively long hair. Anyway ... amongst the tunes I managed to get played were:

Genesis - Get'em out by Friday
Beatles - Revolution
and possibly the one I am proudest of:
Hawkwind - We took the wrong step years ago.

There may have been others but after 37 years or so the memory tends to play tricks.

I have a particularly challenging class...except when I do music with them. It's the carrot that I dangle over them as they hum and haw their way through half a dozen sums and a few sentences in the morning. If you'd been in the vicinity of my classroom this afternoon you'd have heard the plinky-plonky sounds of 22 glockenspiels, xylophones, chime bars and bongos rocking out melodically to my guitar re-interpretations of Poker Face and Empire State of Mind.

They love it. And so do I.

22 glockenspiels, xylophones, chime bars and bongos

are you the real Phil Spector?

Aye, very good! If I was the real Phil Spector I may well have shot one of the more colourful classroom characters by now.

Two instances spring to mind.
One was in a geography lesson where we decided that the teacher just had to hear a track from the new Ian Dury album - namely Plaistow Patricia. It didn't really get past the first "Arseholes.... before the class let rip with laughter. Fortunately the teacher had a sense of humour.
Second was presenting a year assembly on the church and it's shortcomings accompanied by PIL's Religion - spoken word version for maximum effect. It did cause one teacher to walk out - job done!

When I was entering my rebellious period at school, the music teacher invited us all to bring an album in on the last day so we could play a track and discuss it.
I opted for The Girl Tried To Kill Me from Ice-T's masterpiece The Iceberg/ Freedom Of Speech. I got about 2 seconds worth.