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Students roast their English teacher with memes about the school year

Who knew English could double as Meme Making 101?

Photo of Rachel Kiley

Rachel Kiley

ms_murphy_memes

Usually, when memes go viral, it’s because they speak to something that many people can relate to. They’re something to unite us all, in their brutal honesty and often in their complete absurdity.

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But when high school English teacher Angela Murphy shared some memes that were highly, highly specific to her students’ experience, she was shocked to discover they went viral all the same.

“I give students the option to submit memes about the school year or our class and we look at them on the last day of class,” she explained in a tweet on May 31. “They usually take this opportunity to roast me, which I don’t mind. They really outdid themselves this year so here’s a thread of our memes!”

She went on to share a bunch of memes edited by her class to be, again, highly, highly specific to their personal experiences at school, and they quickly and inexplicably went viral—with the first tweet alone receiving over 35,000 retweets and almost 173,000 likes as of this post.

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https://twitter.com/magicalmsmurphy/status/1134509762358366209

https://twitter.com/magicalmsmurphy/status/1134510396725817345

The reimagined memes reference everything from classic memes like blank-faced Steve Carell from The Office to some new hits from this year, such as the “and I oop” meme. There are even some complete originals in the bunch, proving this English teacher’s students have learned the literary merits of both homage and creativity.

https://twitter.com/magicalmsmurphy/status/1134515123018719233

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https://twitter.com/magicalmsmurphy/status/1134516038563840000

(Spoiler alert: It wasn’t the last one.)

The compliments for Murphy’s unique approach to an end-of-the-year roundup with her students rolled in.

https://twitter.com/msblackteach/status/1134801946370555905

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https://twitter.com/kriola_fofa617/status/1134889055194402816

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And some teachers even found inspiration from Murphy’s idea and brought it to their own classroom.

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And like any good teacher, Ms. Murphy also took the time to explain the origins of some of the memes, considering the vast majority of people on the internet definitely don’t have any inside knowledge of how her classroom operates.

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https://twitter.com/magicalmsmurphy/status/1135195583180824580

And she had a helpful suggestion for any educators sharing this exercise with their own students…

https://twitter.com/magicalmsmurphy/status/1134964954233106432

While it’s unlikely Murphy’s tweets went viral for the relatability of the memes, they do give an impressive insight as to how teachers can go about making class fun and engaging for the newest online generation. And there’s one thing we can pretty much all agree on: we wish we had a teacher like Murphy when we were in high school.

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