I’m a student in a college photography class, our teacher has us find photos online and recreate them

Is this standard practice? I’ve been shooting as a hobby for a while now and finally getting around to finishing a certification I’d started about 8 years back. I love the creative freedom photography allows and I feel kind of weird essentially copying someone else’s work for an assignment. I understand fundamentally needing to see if students can understand lighting and set up but I feel like there’s better ways to achieve that than copying work. What do you guys think? This is also not a fundamentals class and all students in it should already have a grasp of general photo basics