Pop culture

For my RRC I focused on the War in Iraq and some of the positive that has happened. Often the media portrays things negatively because negative news draws more people in and produces better ratings, making more money, and money is power. Misery likes company. Even though I specifically deal with younger kids, I still think it is important to gently bring up the War because it effects everyone. I realize they may not understand everything, and they should not have to, but it is more about respecting the people who have served and who are serving overseas. Pro-war or anti-war, the troops deserve respect and support. More importantly, there is a group of people who choose to idenitify themselves with the armed forced. Those people have formed a cultural identity based upon their devotion to specific literacies, this particular literacy being that of the armed forces. Within this group are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other family members and friends who know someone who is serving our country. Because they are part of an established cultural identity, they share some of the same ideas and beliefs and even perhaps have their own lingo or language that they use when in each others company. This cultural identity, or a discourse, then becomes part of their identity kit (Gee, 1991 & Mahar 2003). This concept can be applied universally. Schools are often a breeding groud for cultural identities and in fact they could be multiple cultural identities within one particular classroom. In 2003, Mahar wrote an article that dealth specifically this and she spoke about her experiences trying to become apart of her students' outside-of-school literacy and in order to do this she devoted a significant amount of time involving herself with her students' popular culture and in the end understood some more of her students' cultural identities. What I like about Mahar, is that she took a risk with her students and she attempted to bridge that gap too often seen in the classrooms. Throughout her involvement she also learned a lot about her students too. She particularly notes, "these out-of-school literacy practices opened my eyes to a world full of rich and complex communication strategies that far surpassed the linear expectations of print text often presented in the classroom" (Mahar, 2003). This article and that quote stuck with me because it serves as a reminder to make that jump in connecting with students. Once you show them that you are interested in what they are doing, they are so eager to share and they feel respected and cared about. And isn't that the main ingredient in a successful learning community? Having your students feeling respected and cared about? Well then doesn't it make sense to at times when appropriate, bring yourself to their level, ask questions and try to engross yourself in their cultural identities. Once that happens, you are able to then discover that in fact these pop cultural interests are educational. Pop culture is in fact what drives students' personal reading and writing. It is how to get them engaged and active in the learning process. By talking the time to learn their identities or associate with them (because you will probably never have as deep of an understanding as they do, since typically they are very passionate) you can better relate to your students. You can understand the language they bring with them to the classroom and make sense of the references and artifacts students bring into the classroom. You will understand the vocabulary they use, the character traits they discuss, the plots they obsess about and the sequence of events they long to change. And these out-of-school literacies actually encourage student to utilize multiple literacy practices in their pursuit of pleasure! Students were acutally able to take school-based strategies and retool them to fit out-of-school needs instead of seperating in-school and out-of-school literacy (Mahar, 2003). But it is not as easy as just associating yourself with your students cultural indentities, it is about taking it all in and applying it to the classroom and teaching them how to apply those skills and strategies they have learned through their popular culture involvement towards learning in the classroom and showing them the bridge that exists between the two. Mahar recalls, "they reminded me that if we choose not to examine the social and political uses of popular culture and not bring the serious analysis of its form into the classroom, these expressions of group identity may simply go underground, leading to the disassociation of that which figures most predominently in the the everyday lives of our students" (2003). The last thing we need is for students to become even more disassociated with school. And if all we have to do is examine the social and political uses of their pop culture and intertwine it into the classroom to get them engaged and active, then why isn't it being done? If we have been warned of the potential disengagment, why haven't more measures been taken?


Conclusion- yes I will integrate pop culture in my classroom and it will play a very pertinent role for the reasons mentioned above. If pop culture is a way to get children involved then why not use it? Furthermore, pop culture could be used to teach all of the aspect of my content. As I mentioned earlier on my blog, if something like Pokemon could be used to teach math and science (in addition to browsing skills, creative writing, strategy, problem solving, etc) than of course I would use it as an aide in teaching math and science (Vasquez, 2003). One time my students in undergrad choose to record their own news station as their economics unit final assessment and it worked out marvelously. It is something I showed interest in and gave them the go ahead because they so badly wanted to use the video camera and imovie to make their own news report about economics. Through their taped news report they were able to meet the standards and show that they had met all predetermined objectives for the unit in an alternative way and in a way that was far more meaningful. They had to work together, research, script what they wanted so say, record it, edit it, and create a final comprehensive piece. It was even better because students could relate their out-of-school literacies to the study of economics- for example, my animal lovers were "animal experts" and reported on how economics affects animals, my sports fanatics lead the "sports" section of the news report and tied in their love of sports to economics and related to the literacies together. So, yes, I believe there is always a way to use pop culture across my content and I know I will use it when I have my own classroom, though I am not sure what the pop culture will be at that time. Whatever it is, I am sure I will let it win me over so that my students will be more successful.