"Critical Literacy and Popular Culture in Urban Education" Ernest Morrell

          Pop culture holds a heavy influence over how our students are told to think and react in their everyday lives.  As a twenty-something, who is already immersed in pop culture, I am versed enough in pop culture to understand how difficult it is to break away from social media and perform scholastically to the standards that have already been set for me.  From Ernest Morrell’s “Critical Literacy and Popular Culture in Urban Education,” I was able to see how important it is to maintain a connection to my student’s lives by way of their interests and today’s pop culture.  However, there are still shortcomings in trying to effectively apply critical methods when teaching students.

            There is still more to teaching English language arts than by helping them understand how grammar works or by helping them learn new vocabulary.  Every student should be well versed in research methods and being able to dissect what they’ve learned on a fundamental basis of literary standards and showing how to use those methods in every day critical thinking.  Morrell’s attempts to provide his students access to various methods of learning methods; he even goes as far as trying to help educators use these tools and methods in their classroom.  The classroom debate set up was an excellent way of setting up how to both help teachers use these learning activities to help their students and also by using these learning methods help their students achieve common core standards.

            As a future educator, I am with Morrell’s way of thinking: using popular culture and figures relatable to topics of discussion can be used in the classroom to help educate students.  I’ve already had past experience working with children and most kids seem to open up more when you have a basic understanding of their interests and make yourself more relatable to them.  However, a teacher or educator shouldn’t just use pop culture to teach.  As educators, it is our job to continue to pass down literary practices that helps open channels of communication between teachers and students while still maintaining common core state standards.