Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom

My three takeaways after reading this article were students need to understand texts before they can be expected to do anything else with them, pedagogy must be centered around the exchange of ideas between students and teachers, and the purpose of interacting with literary texts is to make connections to the outside world. First of all, students need to grasp the main concepts of a text before they can attempt to critique it. Otherwise, they will appear misinformed and their argument will lose validity. Secondly, the student-teacher relationship is crucial for learning. Instead of using the "banking metaphor" that Freire strongly opposes in his book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, teachers must realize that they can learn just as much from students and allow them to take control of their own learning.

In my last post, I mentioned that  teachers should provide students with information and guide them when necessary, but they should not make decisions for them. Once teachers begin to make decisions for students,  students lose the power to think for themselves. Lastly, while it is important for students to be able to analyze and critique literary texts that is not the main goal. The main goal  is for students to connect what they are reading to their own lives or popular culture. If students notice why literary texts are relevant to their learning, they are more likely to stay engaged.

The idea that I would like to try in my own classroom is using hip-hop music and culture to teach poetry. Not only would a unit built around hip-hop be fun to teach, but it would also  help demonstrate the similarities in music and poetry. In addition, students would be surprised to learn how relevant popular culture is to their education. They do not have to solely rely on literary texts to find information or learn about their surroundings because there are other resources available to them.