“Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom”

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One of the ideas that really stuck with my within in this reading is the acknowledgement of different forms of literature and how literacy can be applied to not just classic literature but also music, TV shows, movies, and magazine articles. Students are often written off as unable to read or comprehend texts but they will enter classes able to recite whole albums, quote movies and TV shows on the spot, and reading about clothes and celebrities obsessively. Students can read, but the ones who are not interested in classical literature or reading what is considered ‘literature’ are seen as students who do not like reading, but they do in their own ways. Literacy can be exhibited through vehicles other than classical literature. Literacy can be shown through the comparisons of classical literate to modern day vehicles of literacy.


As a future educator I hope to remember that the students that seem like non-readers can and will have other types of vehicles for learning and hopefully connecting to literature through those alternative vehicles. Remembering that students do not love reading as much as I do is a reality that I have to face every time I want to teach a favorite book or short story or get excited about an article. Student are not always going to be as pumped as I am about reading classics and jumping into research projects the way that I dream and want them to. Finding ways to connect students and get them excited about the projects that I assign while teaching them skills is something that even now I’m working on figuring out how to create excitement with assignments for my students in my placement. Having only graduated in 2015 I’m pretty young for a teacher candidate which can make relating to the students and creating fun assignments a little easier for me.

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