Yesterday was the first day of the Spring semester at Athenian. The Current Events seminar kicked off the year with a look back at 2012.  The New York Times’ Learning Network blog is running it’s second annual student contest: write a rap about the news.  In 16 lines or less, students are challenged to write a Year in Rap based on major news stories from the past year.  In less than an hour, the students in the Current Events class hand-picked the major news stories of 2012, boiled them down to a chosen few, folded in pop culture references, and seasoned with some playful analysis to serve up this rap:

Athenian’s Current Events Class: 2012 Year in Rap

2012, the Mayans got it wrong
What happened? Let’s lay it out in this song
Mitt Romney tried to win, but he lost to Barack
Whatever happened with the war in Iraq?
Romney slammed the 47%, so Obama got a job
Banks had to pay the people they robbed
People figured out that you only live once
And if you believed in the apocalypse, you looked like a dunce
The Mars rover landed, Honey Boo Boo was a star
Felix flew from space, Gabby flew on the barre
PSY kicked Bieber off the YouTube stage
Two different giants won; it’s their golden age
Aurora brought fear, Sandy made the East drown
We cried for the first graders in Newtown
Yet its horrors created heroes who sacrificed their lives
We salute their courage, even as we mourn inside

— Leah, Eileen, Gordon, Katie, Natalie, Phillip, Christian, Kora, Logan, Kaia, Alex, Tyler, Andrea, Helen, Lori and Ben