Helfrich Park Teacher’s ‘Hamilton’ Parody Welcomes Students Back
Note to self - if you want to get the attention of young people, or perhaps gain a little street cred with them, referencing Hamilton is not a bad place to start. The Broadway musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton has been a pop culture juggernaut since hitting the stage in 2015.
One Evansville teacher has combined his own musical ability with the show's popularity to create a brilliant parody song and video for returning students this month. His name is Darrin Carnahan, and he's an 8th-grade teacher at Helfrich Park STEM Academy. [QUICK SIDE NOTE: Does anyone else feel weird calling teachers by their first name? I'm a grown man and he's not my teacher, but I still like I should call him Mr. Carnahan. Am I strange?] So, which song did he decide to parody? Is it one of the cleverly rhymed raps and powerfully belted numbers? Nope Mr. Carnahan decided to parody one of the most light-hearted and most popular characters...King George III. His highness was brilliantly portrayed by Jonathon Groff who, despite only having a handful of appearances, stole the show every time he was on stage. Here's what his song "You'll Be Back" sounds like when aimed at middle school students in 2020.
My son will be in one of Mr. Carnahan's classes this year - I hope that knucklehead realizes how lucky he is to have a teacher as cool as Mr. Carnahan. I hope we all realize how amazing our teachers are here in the Tri-State, whether they write parody songs or not. I can only imagine how ready these dedicated men and women are to get back in the classroom and start molding all those young minds.
Good luck Mr. Carnahan (dealing with Oliver), and thanks for this great moment of levity!