Category Archives: Also posted at ISCA

Rapping about Cultural Irrelevancy

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If I had a dollar for every time I was handed a book on how to teach or incorporate hip-hop in my classroom – at least looking at my bookshelf – I’d have seven dollars. And I realize that seven texts around creating culturally relevant curricula through the use of hip-hop isn’t all that excessive, but lately it’s had me thinking.

First, I’ll provide a bit of seemingly frivolous back-story: I grew up immersed in music. I listened broadly and made pointed personal connections in the myriad genres that now fill the cluttered CD shelves throughout my abode. I listened to hip-hop, Appalachian folk, and 20th century classical indiscriminately. I feel that, like many other teachers, I “get” hip-hop (though a case could be made that it cannot be “gotten”).

The problem isn’t hip-hop. The problem is that there is an unspoken assumption that hip-hop is the answer (the unspoken problem thus being how to get students engaged). Before student teaching, I’d been immersed in the tropes of the feel good teacher films. I still watch them if only because the formula is so pristine in its execution and pacing from one film to another: Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, Sister Act 2 (you didn’t know that was a teacher movie??), Half Nelson, etc. Watching enough of these I knew that to be a good teacher in an urban high school meant playing socially conscious hip-hop and watching the “urban-ness” of the surroundings melt away from the angels that my students have become. Many of the books I’ve looked through appear to offer this kind of quick fix solution. Hip-hop, as a result has become a veritable panacea to our literacy problem. Hallelujah!

The only problem is that it’s not. Hip-hop isn’t the solution. I question how many teachers are grabbing their IMA funded Tupac CD and playing a single song and feeling like they’ve connected for the day. How many hip-hop fans have brought in that sole Mos Def CD or Dead Prez album (you know which one I’m talking about), and felt like they were authentically culturally responsive?

The vast majority of my students today do not listen to hip-hop. Have no interest in it. If I were not paying close attention, I wouldn’t know the differences between reggaeton and hip-hop. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be the solution either.

Ultimately, this isn’t a diatribe for or against hip-hop. It’s a long-winded attempt to point to the fact that what our schools (and the texts that our district and our BTSA induction programs provide) are claiming as culturally responsive is limited, debilitating in vision. We can’t give people the direct tools for this kind of curriculum in the classroom; we don’t know a given teacher’s students or those students’ experiences. What can be changed is how to provide teachers with an understanding of recognizing the cultural and community experiences that need to be reflected upon and utilized within a class. There are some great texts around this issue, but most of the ones I’ve been given are of the play-this-Nas-track-and-read-Prufrock variety.

The hip-hop as panacea trend is an extension of the kinds of caged-in institutionalized practice that traps students into class structures. Cultural responsiveness should be an innate part of one’s teaching practice. It cannot be scripted, it cannot be found by reading up on the latest teen trends online and it definitely cannot be found in the appendix of the latest instructional book you’ve just been handed.

What is the language of reform?

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This is another entry that is cross posted at the ISCA blog. I’ve made a tag to make this clear.

I recently read Sustainable Leadership by Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink. Though generally enunciating the types of leadership changes needed the our schools, the book brought up something that’s been bothering me of late in regards to educational reform; namely, the borrowed metaphors that continually cloud the discussion of reform. Even looking at the title of the book the type of language that Hargreaves utilizes should be obvious (psst…. it is environmental!).

Throughout the book, discussions of reform revolve around the use of an environmental and a business model vernacular. Where is education’s own bag of language? What is going on here? Apparently, we’re stuck with misappropriated metaphors (and useless logerrhea describing the “environmental sustainability,” “entropy,” and “erosion” for those not in the bio-know).

The business jargon is of no surprise either: many of the “leadership” texts that you’ll notice our administration citing or utilizing as data are business texts. Sustainable Leadership is no exception (though I do agree with the general thrust of the book). Presently, visitors at Manual Arts (predominantly parents) are asked to take a Customer Service Survey. Subsequently our school promotes the high marks on our Customer Service Report. Does anyone else feel strange to think of our parents as customers? I realize we can look at our school as a business but what does this do to notions of profit? Notions of competition? Personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable working under this model as my primary frame of mind as an educator.

Related to this, how did a chapter titled “Diversity” turn into detailed minutiae about business networks?

Instead of wanting to learn why our educational reform model in the U.S. is “like a machine,” how to erase our “ecological footprint,” or even how to “Develop a ‘hacker ethic,’” it feels like it’s time to stop appropriating the language and metaphors of other sectors – it seems like it’s part of the reason why we’re in this mess in the first place! Of course, I’m not going to be presumptuous enough to propose what new guidelines we are to use. Metaphors are used to create symbols to represent and direct us toward a new frame of vision; presently these metaphors are clogging our dialogue and leading reform astray.

Again, I want to reiterate that I think the general ideas are worthwhile in Hargreaves’ text; I’m concerned by the perpetuated wrongdoing of language as demonstrated within the text.

When Good Feedback Goes Bad

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As is the case at the end of any grading period, I had my students write anonymous evaluations of my 11th and 12th grade English classes after they completed their final. Not that it’s an exactly innovative notion, but I am generally interested in redesigning and shaping my class around what my students see as being successful for their needs. The exact prompt students were asked to respond to was as follows:

Evaluation: This is the end of your 2nd mester of English, you will not have any more English classes this year. Please write down what you think could be most improved about this class for future students. What do you think was least helpful in your development as a reader, writer, and critical thinker? What do you think was most interesting or most helpful? How can Mr. Garcia be a better teacher? Do you have anything else you would like to say? Please do not put your name on this evaluation.

I continue to struggle with trying to come up with a way to get students to be harsher in their criticism. I generally get positive affirmations about how students liked the class, my teaching style, or the curricula used. The problem is I don’t really need to hear these comments; sure, they’re nice, but they don’t help me improve. Perhaps most frightening with this semester’s batch of evaluations is the number of students that reiterate the following basic idea:

“…I think that you already are a good teacher and do not have anything you need to improve. I think the people who need to change are the students…”

Much of my class revolves around decisions: students choose to focus on their work, to push themselves, to turn in their myriad writing assignments on time. So many of my students wrote their reflections about how their classmates are not holding themselves accountable or up to the expectations delineated in the class goals. To me, when I a student is not succeeding in class, I (as I’d guess many other teachers would) take the lack of success personally – I am not able to connect with the student or find a way for this student to make the decision to engage in class work.

Not to get too righteous here, but the students in my class have been denied access to the kinds of educational opportunities that other public school children have received for far too long. It’s evident that this kind of hidden curriculum is so deeply engrained in our students’ psyche when the onus of blame is seen as that of one’s classmates than on the educator. That is, I should be the one scrutinized, criticized, and lambasted if a student is not performing as expected – not the student in the class conspicuously trying to text message a friend.