Despite the common belief (especially among the older generation) that hip hop holds no merit, there are actually useful ways to incorporate it into the classroom. The articles explore the use of hip hop in literacy and English classes when looking at literary devices, and specifically creative writing. This seems an obvious connection because rapper like Tupac introduced us to the idea that rap is lyrical poetry.

Although we are not choosing to focus on this it is interesting that there is a big divide between hip hop that can help and the degrading hip hop that gives all rappers a bad name. Of course, certain hip hop songs and lyrics are not only inappropriate but lack any of the merit that would make them useful. Surprisingly to some, though, there is a large number of hip hop and rap that does translate into the school work and can be helpful.

Although I found these ways of using songs to help interesting, I was more intrigued by the sites that featured rap as a gateway to learning. Many sites have rap and hip hop videos to teach subjects similar to school house rock. This shocked me because I didn’t realize people were accepting the use of hip hop in the classroom as well as they are. If we think literacy is knowing hoe to read and write and communicate with language then hip hop is not only useful in teaching it, but I believe it creates a literacy of its own. Some people can’t understand, write or even read hip hop and rap, making it its own unique literacy language. If this is a language many students are using then it only makes sense to incorporate it into the learning process.

 

(Although, I am toying with the idea that teachers may ruin the hip hop genre for students who see it as an outlet that is unrelated to school. If we incorporate hip hop will students move onto a new genre/style?)

Reading Just Girls, walked my group and I down memory lane. We found ourselves realizing just how true it is that in Junior high literacy practices that are not school sanctioned are what determine and play into social roles. Each clique or group of friends has certain literacy practices that they use to establish themselves. For us, we found that we each used different literacies, and could remember what type of literacies other girls used in their group of friends.

Yearbooks, a simple book of pictures to capture a year of school become an incredible literacy tool in this book. The way students use the yearbook, and perform literacy within it, make a lot of social implications. The decision of who gets to sign it, and then reading what they wrote to you, can make or break a jr. high girl’s social status. The book tells a story of one of the girls in the study who receives the words “BOOBS” in her yearbook by a boy. Despite the fact that she covers it up, all the girls want to see where it was written, and although they act disgusted, the girl with the word boobs, becomes the talk of the school, and thus the most popular. Our group talked about this directly and even came up with some examples of these situations from our past. It made one thing clear ; Literacy practices weren’t just defining the popular girls from the nice girls, but also defining the roles of boys and romance in young girls lives.

Juxtaposed with the girl who received the “dirty” message in her yearbook, were the girls who didn’t have yearbooks at all. Their inability (financially) to one and their lack of interest in it deemed them “unpopular.” Something about this literacy practice defines the social role of these  girls, and how they are perceived by teachers, each other, parents and even themselves. We sympathized with these girls, realizing that junior high is a hard and very awkward age.

Our conclusion, much like the author’s, was that this age uses literacy practices to sort through a world that is in between childhood and adulthood. In a note written by one of the girls, there were two sentences next to each other that proved this. The first sentence asked if she could go trick-or-treating with the receiver of the note. Directly following that she writes that she is so desperate for a boyfriend. Seamlessly, she uses the literacy of passing a note to intertwine both the childish desires that hang around with the new adult desires.

When I first read/skimmed the New London Group article, I really wasn’t getting much from it. Once I got to class, though, some interesting conversations came up and really got me thinking. We made sense of the article by saying that this group wanted to change the way we teach and think about literacy. The idea of a metalanguage made up of more than just reading and writing really got me excited/nervous about my future teaching career.

In today’s culture, kids are inundated with material all day long. With internet, smartphones, music, etc. it’s hard to impress them with something as “archaic” as a book. What is even harder than getting their attention in class, is successfully getting students to participate outside of class by actually reading it. When video games, internet, social media, texting and more are at their fingertips how do we teach reading skills? The idea of using these technologies to teach is what probably sparked my interest most in the New London piece. Even though technology wasn’t what it is today when they wrote the text, it applies perfectly.

“They need a metalanguage – a language for talking about language, images, texts, and meaning making actions.”

“…a metalanguage that describes meaning in multiple realms.”  (77)

Since metalanguage stuck out to me, so did these quotes. The idea that there is a need for social language, work language, and academic language is completely true. We are expected to switch seamlessly between them all, yet school only teaches us the grammar and curriculum for academic writing and reading. While that form of literacy is probably the least likely to be used anywhere else in life. Teaching what is appropriate for what context and what type of literacy works for what is more important that the five paragraph essay. So, I’m wondering why none of the teachers I had ever thought about this? Why do teachers use the same lesson plans 40 years in a row? Every class is different, the dynamic and students make up a different body of kids needing different information, skills, and literacy practices. The only reason I could think of is that it’s easy. Adapting to students is hard and takes a lot of work out of teachers especially when each student is so different. Finding books to accommodate them all, or assignments that seem relevant to all their goals is challenging. I don’t want to be a lazy teacher who gives my students few skills that they can use in the real world. I would rather use a metalanguage of images, technologies, videos, texts, until I find the ones that work for each student and makes them learn something useful.

What is school for if not to teach students how to interact in society and the workplace?