Critical Pedagogy and Pop Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom

Have you ever seen the movie Freedom Writers? It's a true story based on a teacher who gets her first teaching job at a high school in Long Beach. The school was once high achieving, but when they put an integration plan in place, it became more "urban" and "rundown". There is a scene in the movie where Hilary Swank (this new and excited teacher) attempts to teach poetry to this very segregated classroom using Tupac lyrics. It's awkward and funny, but it's what this reading reminded me of. (If you haven't seen Freedom Writers, drop whatever you are doing right now and watch it. Now.)

Anyway, I liked this reading. It was interesting to read about the implementations Duncan-Andrade and Morrell made in their urban classrooms. Personally, I went to a 4a high school in Tri-Cities. We weren't necessarily the richest school in the area, but we never really wanted for anything. 1700 students, and we all had the books and supplies we needed to be successful. When I envision myself in my own classroom, I think about the classrooms like the ones at Kamiakin. This made me think about what my classroom would be like if I was in a more urban setting. I really liked their unit using Savage Inequalities and Stand and Deliver. Although I haven't read Savage Inequalities, I have seen Stand and Deliver and it was interesting how they got their students to realize that things can be done. They were shown that there are so many other students that face the same issues they do and its possible to overcome these issues. At the end of the unit, change happened: "everyone on campus, from the principal to the teachers, was on notice that if something was not right, the students would get to the bottom of it" (pg 191).

I think it's incredibly important to empower students in this way. That they can change their circumstances, that it doesn't HAVE to be this way or another way. I really enjoyed the situations these gentlemen put their students in, and the way they taught difficult topics such as race and justice.

This, compared to our last couple readings, was my favorite.