Making pop culture a STANDARD in the classroom

Public school education is driven by standards and standardized tests. Unfortunately, for teachers and students, this mainly has a negative impact on education. For the most part, standardized tests aren’t created by teachers, or scored by teachers. In addition, they categorize all students as the same. How is it fair to expect students with disabilities to score the same as regular ed students? Ok, this was a rant...this is not about NCLB or even testing. It is about how teachers can still incorporate popular texts into the classroom despite the limitations imposed by testing.

The conclusion to Morrell’s book speaks to mainly teachers and what we can do to incorporate strategies into our classrooms that benefit our students. It is not an easy road, but teachers need to work to help preserve our autonomy in our classrooms. We need to become textual producers and action researchers who investigate with students, multiple outcomes associated with innovative classroom practices. We cannot be passive observers, following the crowd of what has been done in the past. We need to step put of our comfort zones, to a point, and find the passions of our students. What do their passions bring to the classroom? What popular texts are the surrounding our students? Vygotsky stated that we need to draw on everyday experiences to help us learn. What is more social than the culture that surrounds us all? Even of a teacher is unfamiliar with a popular texts that students are obsessed with, think about the wonderful opportunities this allows to build a relationship with students.  

I enjoyed this book. I recommend it to anyone in education, who wants to help improve literacy. Although his target is the youth of America, I think that the teaching of pop culture could help anyone of any age. Morrell is engaging through his examples of his own experiences and he clearly addresses what he believes is important to incorporate into classroom teaching. He never states that classical texts should not be used, but he does point out that many of these "classics" are filled with topics and themes that are used as reasons AGAINST the teaching of popular texts: racism, violence, profanity, sex. 

As a somewhat seasoned teacher, this book made me reflect on my own teaching and the opportunities my students and I are missing out on by not incorporating more popular culture into the curriculum. Morrell references many lessons that he had pre-service teachers work on and I firmly believe that if we also did this through all universities, our new generation of teachers would be better equipped, thus helping students to become more literate members of society. 

My plans??

I am going to create online literacy discussions (thanks also to Dr. Pence for this idea) so that my students can discuss what they are reading, viewing, or listening to. I also plan to add more contemporary advertisements to the discussions of propaganda, rather than relying on historical examples. I'm also toying with the the idea of "Media Mondays" where we would discuss what the students did over the weekend (movies, TV, games, sports), allowing us the opportunity to discuss the impacts these activities have on students.  

The World Series of Classrooms

""The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." ~ Babe Ruth 

Each year, it seems as though I have more students involved with sports, whether it is soccer, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, or tennis. Some of these students spend hours after school with practice. When my daughter was a varsity cheerleader, she would have practice after school from 3-6, but during competition season (which I swear never ended!) she would have it 3-5 and then again 7-10...during the week! 

When Morrell coached a girls’ basketball team, he was a grad student as well as a tutor at an Athletic Study Center. Although he had not incorporated sports in his classroom to promote literacy, he decided to try it with the students he tutored and the girls on the BB team. 

Caleb was a student who Morrell tutored, who was considered not too bright by his teachers. He was an avid fan of football, as well as being a player himself. What Morrell noticed was that although Caleb’s teachers, and Caleb himself, claimed that he was a weak reader, when he would meet with Morrell, he would have the sports page clearly annotated with notes about players, teams, and stats. He possessed a vast knowledge of many NCAA Division I football teams, to which he could add his critical commentary. He was critically reading and analyzing the stats, just not in the way his teachers wanted. Morrell’s goal was to transfer these skills to the broader context of school.

With his basketball team, Morrell created mandatory study sessions for the girls and he stocked the playroom with various magazines, books, and biographies related to sports. He would also record as many basketball games as he could so that the players could check the tapes out to analyze. If they checked out a tape, they were required to show Morrell the notes that they took pertaining to the plays, as well as the players. Morrell used this time with his players to also help them deconstruct the limited gender roles for women that are supported by the mass media and public institutions, like schools. 

As a teacher, I know that sports are important but it is irksome when students receive Cs, Ds, and even Fs, because they seem to have no time for school work. Morrell takes another perspective on this that uses the students’ interest in sports to help them develop stronger literacy skills. My problem is that classroom teachers have less ability to do this than the students’ coaches, and until coaches incorporate these strategies into their practice schedules, I don’t think that students will receive the most they can from sports. Morrell suggests that for teachers who are not coaches, we need to establish powerful relationships with coaches at the school. We should see them as allies and offer suggestions as to how they can incorporate literacy skills into their practices. By adding the topic of sports to the classroom, English teachers can also have critical dialogue about the relationships between sports and society. His argument is “The development of critical literacy entails not only a reading of the world but a rewriting of that world.” (114)

Mass Media

“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.” 

~ William Bernbach

Media, no matter what kind, has a huge influence on youth. Whether a student sits to watch the evening news, or is simply surrounding by media through the commercials and advertisements targeted to adolescents, the youth of America are “learning” many things about their identity, gender roles, or life-style images. Morrell states that we need to help provide students the skills to critically question mass media. They need to be able to deconstruct the messages, and to do this, we need to teach them the analytical skills necessary.

Morrell mentions two types of mass media, media advertising and major news reporting; however, the majority of his focus was on the latter. In conjunction with others, Morrell created a summer research seminar entitled “Education Access and Democracy in Los Angeles: LA Youth and Conventions 2000”. This was designed to apprentice 30 urban youth as critical researchers of urban issues, within the context of the Democratic National Convention. Through the unit, the goal was for the students to develop research and literacy skills necessary for college success. 

The project consisted of four weeks. The first two were dedicated to research if the issues and topics that would be debated and discussed at the conventions. During the third week, the students interviewed politicians and community leaders about popular issues. To wrap it all up during the last week, the students went back to the university to analyze the data. The focal areas for the students were on youth access to media and media access to youth. Their concerns were that youth were not portrayed positively in the media, nor are the youth that are shown representative of the majority. Their conclusion from the study was that many students read and interact with the media without thinking about the perspectives, the truth, the author’s positionality, or the expertise of others. Most fail to consider how decisions are made in the media regarding youth and youth issues. 

This project was ideal with helping students with writing for empowerment and this is what I want to take into my classroom. My first semester curriculum is about issues and challenges in society and how they impact us. We first read Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver, and beginning in a couple of weeks, we will move towards a unit concerning the affect the media has on us. The students will read Animal Farm as we discuss propaganda techniques and rhetorical strategies and we will then move on to read The Hunger Games. (This is about a futuristic America where the country is broken into 12 “districts” and a Capitol. To remind people of the past uprisings that resulted in the new division of America, each district is to send one boy and one girl each year to the Hunger Games, where they fight to the death until there is only one survivor. During this time, the games are televised and it is considered mandatory viewing. It is such a good book!) With both Animal Farm and The Hunger Games, we will be discussing current media and propaganda and how it truly does shape of views and opinions. For example, the students will be analyzing commercials and advertisements, looking for the purpose behind them. I will probably add ideas from Morrell and have the students create pamphlets, newspapers, and websites that will help develop and hone their critical lenses of looking at media. 

For more reading, Morrell references Douglas Kellner’s Media Culture: Cultural Studies; Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern Media Culture and Peter McLaren’s Rethinking Media Literacy: A Critical Pedagogy of Representation.

A Place for TV and Film in the Classroom?

"Carpe Diem! Seize the day... Make your lives extraordinary." 
~ John Keating, Dead Poets Society


Many us remember the days of substitutes in the classroom, which often times translated into MOVIE DAY! Unfortunately, this is not in the past and there are still times when a movie is the easiest sub plan. On the first day back from winter break last year, my daughter (who was a high school senior) had a sub in two classes...and watched two movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Princess Bride. And before you ask, no there wasn't a lesson attached to the movies; they were just to watch them. 


Changing this belief that a sub day is the only time to show a movie is probably the hardest thing to overcome for teachers today, who actually use film as a tool of analysis and critique in the classroom. Morrell builds a case for movies in the classroom though his descriptions of two units his employed in his high school English classes. His four main reasons to support the use of film in the classroom are(90):

1. It increases motivation.
2. It taps into background knowledge.
3. It improves awareness.
4. It fosters sociopolitical philosophy.

In Morrell's units, the goals were to have the students critically analyze the films, then discuss how the themes are also seen in the literature. The first 20-25 minutes of class was watching the film, with The LIGHTS ON, and then the remainder of the period was given to analysis and discussion. Who would have thought to pair The Godfather (the film) with The Odyssey and Native Son with A Time to Kill (the film)? Certainly not me. Don't get me wrong. I love the use of film in the classroom. I think it helps build engagement and motivation, especially since many 8th graders believe that they aren't doing any work if there is a movie playing. 


Through The Godfather and The Odyssey, the students are asked to think about the following: 

1. The treatment of women and the world view of femininity
2. the voyage to manhood
3. role of religion
4. the epic hero and his journey

Through Native Son and A Time to Kill, the students focused upon:

1. equality and justice
2. racism and prejudices
3. simplistic notions of right and wrong

Within the units the students began to use the world as a text also, as they began to take the themes from the literature and films and apply them to their own world. The A Time to Kill/Native Son unit was a powerful unit for the students since many were minorities themselves and had personal experience with injustice, inequality, and racism. They were so moved by the unit that as a class, they decided to dedicate the final 6-weeks of school to creating a magazine that exposed the injustices the students faced on the school campus; thus taking a theme from a movie and applying it to their own world. 

Like everything else in education, using movies isn't a cure-all. Morrell still had disengaged students, as well as issues with truancy; however, the students in class found the use of contemporary movies teamed with classical texts rewarding because it allowed them to tap into their own background knowledge as well, in order to critique the texts.

For me...
The new curriculum that we have implemented at school, SpringBoard, using many different movie clips, in conjunction with the texts being used in the classroom. I have used movie clips for many different reasons (the first 8 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark to help teach climax, The Corpse Bride for mood, Westside Story's Jets/Sharks scene as a companion to The Outsiders Socs/Greasers rumble) so this hasn't taken me out of my comfort zone too much, but other teachers in the school now think that all I do is "watch movies", more so than I already did.

What I find interesting are the messages/themes/allusions that students see in a film that I myself sometimes fail to notice. When Terminator Salvation came out in theaters, we were finishing a unit on the Holocaust. Many students came back from the opening weekend, sharing how they believed there were allusions to the Holocaust throughout the movie, e.g., when Kyle Reese and other humans are rounded up and taken to Skynet, via a flying "cattle car." Or, after talking about Star Wars, the conversation the students had concerning the connections between the movie and Nazi Germany. (The stormtroopers were named after the Nazi stormtroopers, and the Empire was modeled on Nazi Germany.) I grew up with Star Wars and absolutely love it, but my appreciation of it grows each year as the students and I talk about its implications in society.

In case you are interested, another great book I found concerning film in the classroom is Reading in the Dark: Using Film As a Tool in the English Classroom by John Golden. It provides clear examples that can be used in almost any English classroom. 

Morrell, E. (2004). Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding Connections for Lifelong Learning. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.

"Music is the universal language of mankind." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer

“This is Hip Hop of today 
I give props to Hip Hop so Hip Hop hooray...ho...hey...ho!” 
~ Naughty By Nature


Hip-hop in the classroom? I have to say that I have never used it. Not because I don't like it. I mean, really, who doesn't get in a good mood when "It Takes Two" by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock plays? "It Takes Two" - Go ahead and play it. It will bring a smile! 


"Ice, Ice Baby"? It's a classic! Although I am not sure that everyone would agree that it is hip-hop.




As a high school teacher, Morrell decided to utilize hip-hop music in his class to help create a critical discourse that was centered around his students, while also promoting academic literacy. Some facts behind hip-hop that Morrell uses as a basis for his decision are (58-60): 

• Hip-hop transcends race, class, and gender.
• Rap is the reflection of the hopes, concerns and aspirations of urban Black youth. The goal is to "educate" listeners.
• It promotes social consciousness, ex. Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, Public Enemy
• Hip-hop texts can be used to scaffold literary terms: imagery, irony, metaphor, diction, tone, point of view, theme, motifs, plot, character development

The three goals of Morrell's senior English unit, along with a colleague, were (60):

1. To utilize hip-hop to scaffold the critical and analytical skills that the students already possess.
2. To provide students with the awareness and confidence they need to transfer these skills into/onto the literary texts from the canon.
3. To enable students to critique the messages sent to them through the popular cultural media that permeate their everyday lives. 

To do this, Morrell and Duncan-Andrade situated hip-hop historically and socially, then discussed its growth as a response to urban post-industrialism. With this, they also needed to incorporate the Elizabethan poetry age, the Puritan revolution, and the Romantics, which were all required by the school district, as well as knowledge for the AP exam and college-level English. The objectives of the unit were for students to develop oral/written debate skills, to facilitate group work, to help students deliver public presentations, to teach students how to critique a poem/song in a critical essay, to help student develop note-taking skills, and to help students become comfortable writing in different poetic forms.

After providing the students with information pertaining to the historical and literary periods, Morrell divided the class into eight groups, assigning each a hip-hop song and poem to present to the class. The students were assigned to analyze the link between the two and to interpret the texts in regards to their historical and literary period. In addition, the students were also tasked to create their own poems of varying styles, some of which were to be about a societal issue that the students felt strongly about. 


Morrell was pleased the responses from his students. The connection between hip-hop and poetry was evident as the students compared the societal issues found in the songs to the real-life examples they witnessed. The familiarity with the music helped to open the doorway for the students so that they could take the analyzing skills they applied to the songs and then apply the same skills to the poetry. 


It is important to remember that just throwing the songs into the curriculum isn't helpful though. The teacher must help the students to create meaning. And, the teacher must also be aware of what "texts" surround the students. I have found that just talking with my students gives me an idea of what they are listening to and watching. Personally, as an 8th grade teacher, many hip-hop songs would be inappropriate for my students, but I can still incorporate many of the mainstream songs that they know. During a unit on teen angst, we spend a few periods listening to and analyzing lyrics of songs that the students have recommended, which they believe reflect the stresses and issues that the students face daily. After discussion as a class, the students then find their own song that they feel a connection to so that they can write a reflection of it it to me. They really seem to enjoy the assignment and I learn the most about them from this lesson; 8th graders are surprisingly open when they feel that they are in a safe environment!     


****

Morrell's Poem and Song Comparisons


“Kubla Khan” - Coleridge and “If I Ruled the World’ - Nas
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” - T.S. Eliot and “The Message” - Grandmaster Flash
“O Me! O Life!” - Walt Whitman and “Don’t Believe the Hype” - Public Enemy
“Immigrants in Our Own Land” - Baca and “The World is a Ghetto” - Geto Boys
“Sonnet 29” - Shakespeare and “Affirmative Action” - Nas
“The Canonization” - Donne and “Manifest” - Refugee Camp
“Repulse Bay” - Chin and “Good Day” - Ice Cube
"Still I Rise" - “Still I Rise” - Maya Angelou and “Cell Therapy” - Goodie Mob

Morrell, E. (2004). Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding Connections for Lifelong Learning.    Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers. 

Why "teach" Popular Culture?

The question is “Why teach Popular Culture?”

I thought the answer was simple, because it is important to adolescents. Seems simple enough, right? But, as a teacher, I have some across times when someone will make a comment about reading “the classics” or he/she may imply that by not teaching the accepted canon of literature, I, and others, am doing a disservice to the students. Perhaps I am, but as a literature teacher I am constantly looking for novels, stories, movies, etc., that will engage the interests of my students. As much as I love some of the novels from my youth, my passion will only push the students so far; the stories just aren’t as relevant to them.

I can’t think of one of my 8^th graders this year that never watches TV or movies, plays video games, listens to music, or reads magazines; they are inundated with various forms of culture. And since all these forms of media surround them, why shouldn’t we use it in the classroom? I mean, does it really matter if a student has read To Kill a Mockingbird if they can receive the same thematic message from a song, a poem, a short story, or a movie? (Side note – I do have my enriched students read this in class…I love the book!)

Morrell makes the case for pop culture in the classroom by providing four main reasons for its use (37). They are:

Popular Culture is…

…relevant to the lives of adolescents. Since many adolescents spend their time immersed in magazines, music, movies and TV, we should use these items to help students to be able to critically analyze the information in them so that they may become more conscious consumers of media. Much production of mainstream media is geared directly toward adolescents and young adults, forcing them to grow aware of the messages and material. There is an argument that pop culture can actually have a negative impact on students, due to it being harmful to their self-esteem, especially in ways in which groups are portrayed (stereotypes). To help combat this, teachers should be help their students to be active learners, learning the ways to critically look at something in order to determine its purpose, or effect it may have on others.  

…is embedded with relevant literacy practices. I mentioned earlier that I sometimes have the feeling that some teachers believe that the “classics,” and only the classics, should be used in a classroom. Morrell mentions that this goes back to a long held belief of the differences between popular culture and “elite” culture. He argues that the literacy practices the students are involved with are actually just as rigorous, if not more so, as the classics used in many secondary classrooms. Many students, when interested in a new movie or band, will read the articles found in Rolling Stone or Spin. These articles are mostly non-fiction, informational expository texts, which more and more surround the students (either in standardized tests or just their everyday reading.) Many times these magazines also include articles that impact the everyday social and cultural aspect of the student’s environment, whether it concerns the current economic status of the country, current political debates, or any other issue of significance. The use of the Internet has also helped the students to become better researchers. Although we still have a problem with possible plagiarism and incorrect information, the Internet does allow us to teach students the strategies needed to critique, analyze, and evaluate information.      

…can help students make connections to academic texts and concepts. Morrell draws upon Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in order to support his belief that the use of pop culture in the classroom will help students to use their strengths and background experiences as starting points that will help them to build upon more skills and concepts. As teachers, we need to take steps to celebrate the diversity of all the students in our classes, by allowing them the opportunity to make sense of the texts that are important to them and that permeate their lives. Then, they will become better equipped to engage with more challenging and complex texts later. SIDENOTE - This reminds me of the movie Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer (based on the true story of LouAnne Johnson). Do you remember it? If I remember correctly, she becomes a teacher and the majority of her students just do not want to engage in ANY learning experience. So, in order to help them she brings in the music of Bob Dylan, karate, and the poetry of Dylan Thomas.  I am not sure how many of her students really liked, or had even heard of, Bob Dylan, but in the movie some students did do a turnaround.

…fosters greater motivation among students. Morrell cites two theories of achievement motivation that he uses to help support his opinion of pop culture in the classroom: Expectancy-Value Models of Motivation (EVM) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Using the EVM theory, Morrell argues that by including elements of pop culture familiar to students, they will have greater expectation to succeed, as well as having a greater incentive to work as well, both components of the theory. The SCT builds upon Bandura’s belief that people will learn skills when they are motivated to do so, and that self-efficacy is a key in achievement. There is also the social aspect of learning that is important, and the idea that students learn better or more through enactive learning (learning reinforced through reward and punishment), learning by doing, and vicarious learning; all a part of the social element Morrell uses throughout his examples in the book.    

I have to say that right now, I am thoroughly enjoying this book. It makes so much sense to me that I am having a hard time imagining someone arguing against these practices in a classroom. Perhaps it is because I am a newer (11 years) teacher, than some of those with whom I work (one of my teammates began teaching the year after I was born), that I can understand the need to pull the students into the learning. And truth be told, I kinda like some of the same things they do!  


What is next? How to include music in the classroom!  

Morrell, E. (2004). Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding Connections for Lifelong Learning. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.

What is Popular Culture?

So, the first item addressed by Morrell, is the most important: What is Popular Culture? When I first began thinking about the topic, I had this idea in my head about pop culture; movies, TV, anything mainstream, i.e., Comic-Con. I didn't think it was that difficult to define; however, it seems to be a topic that is vague because many different people have many different opinions about what it is.

Morrell believes that in order to understand pop culture, one must first understand cultural theory. So here is the abbreviated Cliff Notes version, according to Morrell, as interpreted by yours truly.

Two schools of thought emerged in the 20th century, and both had beliefs concerning pop culture. 

The Frankfurt School of Social Research

• began in the late 1920s; was a collaboration of philosophers, sociologists, and literary theorists
• the combination of the school's Marxism and psychoanalysis became known as critical theory
• believed that modern society was a struggle between two economic classes: bourgeoisie (property-owning class) and the proletariat (working class)
• since the bourgeoisie controlled the economic base of society, they also controlled the cultural institutions of that society...basically they controlled what they wanted promoted to society
• Antonio Gramsci - a Marxist theorist - sought to find a way to explain how the majority of people would accept a system that oppressed them, without rebelling or revolting 
• added the term, hegemony - the ideas, strategies, and beliefs that the dominant class uses to gain support/consent from the lower class - I think of this as propaganda techniques that are used to manipulate society (two other theorists Max Horkheimer and Ted Arno termed the media, popular music, film, and TV as cultural industries; the industries that promoted the beliefs)

Onto the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)

• founded by Richard Hoggart as a place to engage in the study of mass culture
• along with Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, they sought to create a way to celebrate the everyday mass culture of the working-class (notably absent in the Frankfurt School)

Differences?

• Frankfurt School saw popular culture as a tool for social control, whereas the CCCS saw it as a celebration and as a sire of resistance

Morrell notes that together these two schools reveal a tension in cultural theory and the study of popular culture..."the same culture that represents working-class resistance can also be marketed to reinforce social inequality." (28)

To help explain popular culture further, Morrell relies on the work of John Storey, from his book An Introductions to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture.  Storey created six definitions that Morrell will use throughout his book. They are:

• Popular culture is culture that is well liked by many people
• Popular culture is what remains after we have decided what is high culture
• Popular culture is mass culture
• Popular culture is that culture which originates from the people
• Popular culture is inspired by ne0-Gamscian hegemony theory
• Popular culture can be viewed through the lens of postmodernism that no longer recognizes the distinction between high and popular culture (31-32)

Two others that Morrell references are Henry Giroux, one of the American cultural theorists responsible for bringing the discussion of popular culture in to education, and Jabari Mahiri, who examines the curricular practices of urban teachers and how they might challenge dominant norms and standards that may be detrimental to students and families.

What does it all mean? The study of popular culture and the implications it has on students is necessary for teachers, especially due to fact that our students are inundated, daily, with various cultural aspects of society.  

So, next time, we shall look at reasons why it is imperative that we examine the role of pop culture in the lives of our students, and how we might utilize it in order to help engage and motivate students, while also improving their literacy.

 

Morrell, E. (2004). Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding Connections for Lifelong Learning. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.