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.
Misty,
ReplyDeleteI think your plans sound awesome. :) I was lucky enough to attend a private middle school/high school in Albuquerque, and something we did each and every year was to have media literacy" incorporated into our curricula. In seventh grade, I remember, we worked in groups to analyze advertisements for different products and to talk about gender roles and stereotypes reproduced through ads. This has stuck with me, and it's an exercise that I do with my English 101 students sometimes. I'm always shocked that they don't have much to say or can't think of ways to unpack the underlying messages in the ads--and then I realize that I had 5-6 years of media literacy training that brought those things to my attention as a kid, and that have really influenced the way that I look at and study media. Since students are so surrounded by media messages (often mixed), I think it's wonderful to give them a chance to talk about, evaluate, question, critique, and wonder about the content of the media messages and how they are shaping the students. I think what you have planned sounds great. :) - erin p
Hi Misty,
ReplyDeleteI think your ideas of using pop culture with your students are really great!! Raising students’ awareness and equipping them with tools that would enable them to analyze objectively all the messages they are exposed to through mass media is exactly what these students need for their future. I also think it would be a good idea of thinking of ways of how to link such pop culture practices to the curriculum. I think they need to have what Paulo Friere called “political clarity,” that is to be able to link disconnected pieces of information that is presented in a flux. In other words, students need to be able to make sense of their “world” before they can read the “word” presented to them by the education system in their school. If they are able to read their world better, they will achieve higher academically.
Noha Ghaly
Hi Misty,
ReplyDeleteIt's great what you have planned for your students. I would be curious to know what impact their week-end experiences have on them. What might be done with those experiences?
This sounds like a great plan, Misty! I agree that using pop culture in the class is useful for all ages. I've used it in the adult ESL and developmental reading classroom, much like the ways Erin talks about from her middle school-deconstructing supportive or harmful messages and discussing their reproduction. I found using pop culture especially useful for my lower level international ESL students who would hum to the tunes of songs but really had no idea what the words meant. We were not only able to discuss real issues and practice language but it was also a great (and necessary) diversion from mind-numbing tasks, such as those related to TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language).
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