Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in a Secondary English Classroom

Jeff Duncan Andrade and Ernest Morrell’s Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom really drives the point home that as a teacher you need to be aware of the cultures and backgrounds of your students to effectively teach them and make lessons relatable to their lives. Amazingly these two teachers proved that sometimes that is the tool that makes the biggest difference, especially with underprivileged students.

Andrade and Morrell proved this during an experiment in which they wanted to focus on introducing critical pedagogy that allowed students to think deeply about the various issues in their school and the world while at the same time introducing English lessons that made use of each students’ culture and backgrounds to educate them. A key example of this occurred when Andrade and Morrell used rap music within a poetry unit as a comparison tool to help students discover the similar themes between classic poetry and the music that they were so fond of. (Andrade and Morrell) Not only were these underprivileged students able to comprehend and analyze poetry effectively because of the duo’s work, but they also soon grew more eager to learn and improve themselves, all this from simply incorporating their culture into the classroom.

The efforts of these two teachers shows just how much of an impact making an effort to understand the culture of your students can have on their education. In fact, it is mentioned within the article that most of these students went on to take the advanced placement exams favored by more well-funded schools and could compete on equal footing in college with most of their wealthier peers. (Andrade and Morrel)

The success story of this English class shows just how effective incorporating a student’s culture within the classroom can be, this is because it gives them a reason to care about what they learn, and if they care, they are that much closer to wanting to succeed.