Hip Hop and Experience Points

I found all of the different presentation groups really interesting, but I particularly enjoyed the hip hop and literacy group and parts of the video games and literacy group.

In the hip hop group, I really enjoyed the focus on poetry and the idea of bringing poetry into the classroom through a genre that the students are familiar with and and understand. The video they showed with Kendrick Lamar going to the high school and how they used aspects of the hip hop culture in the classroom was really cool because it showed students getting excited for something that often students groan about. Using the hip hop culture in the classroom got students into the curriculum in a different way and allowed them more freedom of expression, something that I find really important. It allowed students to play with the english language in a different way, maybe a way they are more familiar with and can understand. In that high school in the video, the students had a role in the development of the curriculum and that gave them a real sense of pride in their work. As a future teacher I like the ideas that this program brought up. I’m not that familiar with hip hop culture myself, but the sense of pride that the students get and the freedoms they feel, are things I really want to be prevalent in my classroom.

What I really enjoyed in the video games and literacy group was the scavenger hunt/quest we went on. It was interesting to think about tasks and reward. When we got back from the scavenger hunt and debriefed it was interesting the different things those of us who went on the quest expected to get when we got back. Thinking in the sense of video games, some of us expected a reward (like coins or gold in a game) and some expected experience points to level up. Leveling up was an interesting thing to think about in the context of education, we talked about how gaining new information was like getting experience points and how as you gain that knowledge, you “level up” in life gaining new knowledge to go new places.