When I was in school, before the turn of the century, we were reading Johnny Got His Gun in English class and discovered that Metallica's One is about a very similar situation (though not apparently originally inspired by Johnny Got His Gun), so we got to play it in class and do a report on the two. Received some minor kudos from the class and a reasonable grade from the teacher.

It got slightly awkward as I believe that was just before the Columbine shooting, and after that metal had a more negative reputation for a while.

The video for that song uses excerpts from the movie version of Johnny Got His Gun. I don't know if the songwriting was inspired by it but the video certainly was. Because the video relied so much on the excerpts the band ended up buying the rights to the movie just to not pay royalties.

Hilariously, I won a writing prize about this connection as a teenager in 1989. Fun to see you had a similar experience

Because it's not regular class. It's an extra-curricular club. If you joined the heavy metal club, you might have had similar activities.

I'd imagine it could backfire as anything school or parents recommend is automatically less cool

If all you knew was Slipknot and a teacher hands you a Dillinger Escape Plan song, you would have the opposite reaction.

I knew someone from the local goth scene where I used to live, who was a German teacher. Part of the assigned homework was to listen to Rammstein ;-)