Pedagogy in an Urban High School Classroom

Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell’s article, “Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom” was eye opening. To be honest, a portion of the read was pretty emotional for me. The section titled, “Savage Inequalities in Urban Schools” broke my heart. In the Spokane area, and most surrounding areas, we are lucky enough to not face what a lot of students face daily. We truly are so fortunate to be in an area where schools have enough money for students to be able to use computers and have functioning classroom materials. It makes me furious to read about cities who have some of the wealthiest schools just miles away from schools that can’t even afford more than one computer for the entire school. It breaks my heart that these students face such hard obstacles at school. Even though I was aware of these inequalities that other schools face, reading this article reminded me how easy it is to forget about those students who are less fortunate. As a future educator, I want to remind all of my students that not everyone is so fortunate to be in the circumstances that we are in. I don’t want to remind them this to make them feel bad; I just want to be able to open their eyes to the sad reality that not everyone has what they have. I also want to make a change with schools that have such poor circumstances, and even though I have no idea where to start with something like that, I know that it is something I am going to look into in the future.

            The second main idea I took from this article is that is it important to try to bring pop culture in the classroom to get students connected and involved. When it comes to reading literature, not every student is going to enjoy it as much as I may. Heck, most students might not enjoy it. It is important for me to keep that in mind as I teach. There are ways that pop culture can be brought into the classroom to peak student interest and let them gain some sort of connection to the material, even if it isn’t the type of connection I had hoped for.