Thought Jar Tidbit #3

I just read two articles about critical pedagogy, read Hill’s Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life, about Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Hook’s Teaching to Transgress.

Som thoughts...

I have to question my whole management style now. Yes we need order and many students need a quiet environment to learn. But if that’s what they wanted innately and naturally, why does it not happen automatically? Why am I fighting their natural tendency, compelling them to be part of an orderly, quiet structure, for which, who knows how much use they will have for, considering the way learning and working are changing so rapidly? I began to tap into this shift in intention during my Classmaps project and the last few weeks’ readings. This takes me to Hill. “Real recognizing real?” I need to really invest more in what these little people in my room really like. I confess that I have been tentative. I have not put every math or handwriting or reading lesson into truly meaningful and truly relevant contexts for them. It’s more like refreshing pops of contexts now and again. Also, the contexts I lean toward are from my childhood. But these children are different. My students relate to authority in a whole different way. They are booked with activities from morning until night, they are not afraid of adults the way I was, and their music and cartoons are a far cry from My Little Pony Sing-Alongs. Basically, I cannot deny what their 2nd grade version of “hip-hop” is. Now while, my particular population of 2nd graders are probably not listening to hip-hop itself in their spare time – I need to figure out what their “hip-hop” is. What do they own, and believe in?

Now this all may sound a little dramatic for teaching 2nd grade. But I think, such a dramatic shift in my mind-set, can really change how they feel about school and it’s purposes. I don’t want them to think I want them to listen for listening’s sake, or because I said so, but because it will allow them to pursue their curiosities. Will they love every lesson? No. I understand that. But we need that “collective response” to something meaningful for them that serves as the “suitable hook for sustaining student interest.” (Hill) Similarly, Hooks writes of "lived" realities beyond the classroom that the learner needs to connect to in order to find meaning. I wish that I had a room full of student’s whose culture was entirely different from mine, so I could exercise the real meat of these two articles, and bring in hip-hop and other vernaculars into our literature (and I can and actually have in moderation, with children’s literature by Angela Johnson such as the book “Do like Kyla”). But my school community is mostly white upper-middle class that relates more to Brittany Spears than to Nas. But still, I understand the message and will infuse a perspective shift that honors “liberation” and not adherence.