November 6, 2014 - 12:57
Hill’s Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life piece raised many points of interest for me in terms of my work at my placement. He discusses the importance of “appealing to the experiences, cultural orientations, values and worldviews of students in order to effectuate greater educational outcomes… [and the need to] make explicit connections between students’ everyday knowledge and the demands of subject-matter learning.” (Hill, 8.) This reminds me of the importance of engaging students’ diverse “funds of knowledge” in order to affirm their innate knowledge based on lived experiences and utilize this as a springboard for conversation, contemplation, and success in teaching and learning. At my current placement, I am working on co-creating an after-school space for girls to express their life experiences and process their emotions through writing. In this space, we have utilized popular culture in the forms of songs, music videos, coupled with poetry about women as a way to tap into student experience and knowledge, while teaching and learning about broader societal impacts on women’s everyday lives. After watching Beyoncé’s Pretty Hurts music video, a piece that most students were familiar with and really enjoyed, we engaged in discussion about body image, self-esteem, pressures from peers and media to look a certain way as well as economic and political challenges facing women in our society. This was an interesting session that seemed to draw from a source of media that many students found as relevant to them, which then fueled further and more intensive discussion around society at large. This seemed to pull on various funds of knowledge that students brought with them, while connecting this every day knowledge with the demands of writing and reading and performing in the space.