"Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom" by Duncan-Andrade & Morrell

I am currently working in an urban school with a reputation for low achievement and crime. My students are not that different than students at other schools but their culture is established by their poverty and the education of their parents. Some of my students' parents used to read to them as kids. Some of them can get help with homework at home. Most do not have those opportunities. They ask why they have to do projects and they resist authority. They see school as another place where they are told what to do.

Duncan-Andrade and Morrell worked in an urban high school near a rich high school. Their students did not even have books to take home from their classes while the rich kids got a new expensive stadium. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell worked with their students on a project of self-discovery, multiculturalism and social justice through literature and popular culture. They used typical works such as "The Odyssey," "Beowulf" and Shakespearean plays to ask their students to look at the "others", "outcasts" or the "have nots" in varying societies over time and space. Their research into multiculturalism had more to do with how they taught than the material they used. Instead of only giving the students materials that some would say would enrich the students' lives past their expected experience, these teachers did not feed them information but helped them draw conclusions about texts from their own experiences in their own cultural practices. Poetry could be compared to rap. An epic tale related to their actual lives and how society lives. Students were asked to look beyond the conventions of text and see how people really relate to one another. They call this "the knowledge production process." (188)

One tool the teachers used was Stand and Deliver (1987 film) about a poor and culturally diverse school with a teacher that worked past the conventions of education to make successful calculus learners out of failing algebra prisoners. I think that using a movie with students in a similar context can help those students relate the ideas they are developing from their texts and other media. They can see how to question their own situations and make solutions.