Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School Classroom

This article was super interesting and aligned with values that I already have kinda developed through my education journey. I loved the fact that the authors were able to make their English class relevant for their students. They addressed that student’s felt like school was pointless. Using pop culture allowed them to create a curriculum and units where students could make connection with their real life lived experiences. One of my favorite aspects of the text was when the authors addressed showing movies in the classroom. In my school experience I have had a lot of movie days in my classes. More often than not the movie would be the film version of a text we read or even worse (from the perspective of an effective educator) had no connection to what we were doing at all. I liked that in the context of using pop culture in the classroom the authors were able to help their students make connections with the world that the students lived in. Movies were not used to pass time but to help make connections and help students understand that the ideas they were learning could also be found and applied in the real world.

I think the authors of this text were incredibly creative. I loved the idea of the poetry unit. Comparing poetry and poetic devices to modern rap is a genius way to show how what a student learns in English class can transcend the classroom. I also really liked the emphasis on the fact that the authors wanted their students to be able to think critically. It is amazing to see how effective the authors were in their ideas. Their students took what they learned and used it to try and help their daily lives. Overall, I loved the idea of using pop culture to bridge what the students were learning in the classroom and how what they were learning could be applied to the real world.