From Superheroes to Taylor Swift: Using Students’ Passions to Ignite Learning

When a student struggling with reading and writing entered Salt Lake City teacher Elyse Arrington’s high school ELA class six years ago, it didn’t take long for her to discover that he was in fact a prolific writer—of rap lyrics about his Indigenous identity. 

He was one of many of Arrington’s students, who, though disengaged from traditional coursework, were deeply involved in storytelling through hip hop. To tap into that passion, she introduced a full-year core English class focused on hip-hop and protest in her high school, a course that weaves traditional instruction alongside her students’ interests, and that now regularly fills up before the semester begins. 

“I thought this might be a way to engage kids who are less interested in the traditional ELA classroom,” Arrington said.  

In recent years, more teachers like Arrington have begun turning to students’ outside interests—in things like anime, video games, and pop music—as powerful entry points for learning in the classroom.

Scott Storm, co-author of Fandoms in the Classroom: A Social Justice Approach to Transforming Literacy, said that by shifting how we view fandom—from a casual hobby to a form of expertise—teachers can connect students’ deep knowledge of music, shows, or books to academic skills like rhetorical analysis and close reading. This helps students see themselves as experts and engage more meaningfully with texts.

“Sometimes people think that adolescent literacy is in decline because they're only measuring a few discrete technical skills,” says Storm, an assistant professor of literacy at the University at Albany. “But that doesn't really capture the full picture of what's going on.” 

Amy Stornaiuolo, chair of the literacies program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Education, notes that recent research has documented “the rich literacy practices that young people are engaged in,” particularly when concerning texts that they watch, read, or listen to in a community of other fans—such as movies, television shows, popular albums by artists like Taylor Swift, or best-selling genre novels. In a 2023 study, for example, she found students are often so proud of their personal fan-fiction writing that they carry it around with them in school, even when it’s not for an assignment.

Stornaiuolo points to three ways teachers can leverage the energy students bring to fan texts—discussing them (social exchange), commenting on them together (social annotating), or creating something new in response (social making). Whether used in a single lesson or across a unit, these practices can deepen engagement while reinforcing core literacy skills.

Small Shifts, Big Gains 

Incorporating student passions into coursework can be as light a lift as adding a quick prompt that knots together student knowledge about an artist or their work with an academic term, skill, or concept and then giving time to reflect. 

For example, some educators encourage students to bring in and dissect outside texts that they love for a couple weeks or even just a day. For a three-week unit on literary devices, Brooklyn high school teacher Jacqueline LeKachman asked her students to submit a favorite text—any written, visual, or aural artifact—through a Google Form and connect it to a specific literary device. She received anime and manga excerpts, as well as Frank Ocean lyrics. 

Students then shared the text and device pairing in a literary-device speed dating exchange, where they faced one another in two concentric circles, taking notes on others’ ideas on clipboards. Afterward, they reflected as a class on the power of literary devices for expressing a message; at the same time LeKachman collated clear examples in a presentation. 

“One of the outcomes was greater engagement. Kids got really excited when they saw their text was being used. It gave them a chance to be an expert,” LeKachman said. “Another outcome was that students had an enriched understanding of a range of literary devices.”

I tried LeKachman’s approach with my eighth-grade ELA students, asking them to submit a text choice paired with two to three explanations of literary devices within it. They presented their choices—mostly video game stills and song lyrics—in small groups, then applied their understanding of devices to poems we were studying as a class. I found extensive engagement from students who were typically less enthusiastic, including one student who did an excellent job noting anaphora in Playboi Carti lyrics. 

Expression As Choice

Another approach to encourage engagement through student passions focuses on student output, rather than input—or how students display knowledge through social creation. 

For her “Scandal Project,” Queens, New York, English teacher Mayah McPherson asks students to choose a cultural “scandal” to investigate (think the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial). Students research the facts of the cases, identify the multiple perspectives one could take to tell the story, and then offer commentary on the larger implications, engaging with ideas of media sensationalism, truth, and guilt. 

McPherson offers examples of cases to choose from, but students can argue for a case that they personally want to investigate. They also choose how to present their commentary. Many, for example, created in-depth group podcasts. “When they have that choice and develop their own conversations around something they get a lot more excited,” says McPherson. 

Instead of a routine essay or written reflection, teachers recommend trying multiple modes of demonstrating understanding and analytical insight into texts students are interested in as a way to heighten engagement. For example, students can respond through letters, websites, graphic novels, or games. 

Philadelphia high school English teacher Samuel Reed designed and scaffolded an extensive project on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, for which students wrote letters to both The Atlantic, which published an extensive feature on Black Wall Street in 2019, and to ancestors of families who had contributed to Black Wall Street.

Students annotated the original reporting and then chose how to present the letters. “One guy who was into comics did a whole visual representation, while somebody into podcasts did an interview, other people wrote traditional letters,” says Reed. “You need to know your kids, know their interests, and give them space permission and structure to do that in the guise of your curriculum.” 

Deep Dives Into What Students Love

To build longer term work around the things his students were fans of, Storm began by inviting his high school students to pitch their passions in what he calls “fandom kingdom seminars.” 

Students brought in textual examples—from DC comic characters to Disney princesses to popular TV series—and Storm led the entire class in discussing elements of fandoms, narrative construction of texts, and social issues surrounding particular fandoms. In the end, students voted on a particular text to focus on, such as the long-running television series, Grey’s Anatomy. 

Storm, working alongside his co-author, Karis Jones, picked a particular episode to analyze together in class. Students took notes while watching, discussed with a partner, then shared with the whole class. Traditional literary analysis skills emerged as students noted features of the text and the instructors elicited the definitions of literary skills like hyperbole and dichotomy. 

Students write a critical literary analysis of their chosen texts—using skills such as identifying themes through details or looking at how text structure impacts meaning. Their analysis includes social issues that the text—or fans of the text—surface. For example, students analyze toxic message boards related to an anime series, or ethnic stereotypes that emerge around popular K-Pop bands.

Later, Storm has students apply the new skills they’ve learned to more traditional literary texts with devoted scholars (fans, in other words) such as Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby, or Frankenstein. This, Storm says, helps students equate academic disciplines to fandoms themselves and connect the work they’re doing to analyze the structural elements of texts they already know well to those that might feel unfamiliar or less accessible. “You can think of literary criticism and literary scholarship as a kind of fandom in itself.” 

Racy Content and Other Challenges

When asking students to bring in outside texts, it is important to be aware of some potential pitfalls. 

One of the biggest challenges can be helping students identify their passions in the first place.  “We have kids who are brilliant and know games inside and out and have super complex vocabulary,” says Antero Garcia, an associate professor of education at Stanford University and a former high school English teacher. But when you ask them what they are experts on they don’t think about those games, Garcia said. 

To help them tap into the knowledge they already possess, Garcia recommends asking them questions like: “If I were to start playing this game right now, what is something I need to know?” 

Another big concern is the potentially risque nature of outside texts. To guard against this, Storm suggests being explicit about bringing in content that is rated PG-13 or G. When dealing with song lyrics in my own classroom, I ask for lyrics that are PG-13, and if that is impossible, I ask students to put stars or dashes on inappropriate lyrics. 

Some educators, like Philadelphia teacher Christina Puntel, use the determination about what is or isn’t appropriate as part of an academic exercise to unpack the line between subversive art and harmful or problematic art. In her classroom, students respond to each other’s presentations regarding the tough social issues that lyrics or other forms of media allude to, and the value of these pieces of art. An “understanding of what their own limits are,” often emerges, Puntel says. 

While periodically engaging with student-directed content can feel like a risk, many educators say that ceding their place as the authority figure and inviting students to share their interests in serious ways ultimately builds community in the classroom and helps motivate students. “It is decentering who has expertise in the classroom. It’s making this positional step of ‘I'm not the only expert, there are 30 other experts,’” says Garcia.