Video: Music Teacher Uses Slipknot to Explain Meter, Help Metalhead Student Come Out of His Shell

Loving metal as a kid is tough, because it often feels like the whole world rolls its eyes or turns up its nose at the thing you love. As an adult, who can define what any of this life bullshit means for yourself, it’s easy to let that behavior roll off your back, but when you’re still growing up, it stings like hell. Thankfully, every so often a teacher shows up who’s willing to engage with, and even help, the young headbanger in the back of class. Which is exactly what one music teacher did, using Slipknot‘s “Wait and Bleed” to teach meter and get her metalhead student out of his shell.

As you’ll see in the video below via our docking partners over at Metal Injection, music teacher Risha Allen (@rishdishfish on Tiktok) was teaching a class of 5th graders about rhythm and meter. She initially used Eminem, but found one of her students wasn’t feeling it, and in order to connect with him, decided to ask what he liked. When he answered metal, and eventually offered Slipknot as a band he was into, Allen used the Iowa nine-piece’s single “Wait and Bleed” to illustrate how meter defines music. It not only helped teach the class, but also apparently reached her student.

“This kiddo was kind of aggravated by the previous Eminem example and wanted to express his own musical preference,” wrote Allen on her video. “I’m a little nervous here [because] I want to relate to him. He hadn’t really engaged with me or liked music class up until this point, so I felt like relating to and respecting his music (very personal) would help me connect with him.”

Hails to Allen for being one of the good ones. Check out the video below and wish you’d had a teacher like her: