![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3614\/3387560689_3f16a0c3a5.jpg?v=0\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m fortunate enough to spend a lot<\/em> of time in my car. It\u2019s Los Angeles, after all, and working and going to school on opposite sides of town lead toward frequently lengthy commutes. Left alone in a silent room long enough and I\u2019ll go crazy \u2013 as I am now, sitting in the jury selection room of a Los Angeles courthouse sans headphones. In any case, a lot of my time is spent in the car either arguing to NPR & talk radio or shuffling through CDs (remember those?) and listening discriminately. A week and a half ago, as I was listening to my umpteenth live Otis Redding album for the umpteenth time I felt a profound sense of understanding of the nature of catharsis and learning within song structure. I wasn\u2019t able to put this into words but had a clear understanding of how something as short-lived as \u201cTry A Little Tenderness\u201d inculcates theories of learning within Redding\u2019s performance (James Paul Gee would call this \u201ctacit knowledge\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n That being said, in a generally unscientific way, I\u2019ve been thinking about what \u201cliking\u201d a song or certain style of music tells us about learning. I\u2019ve been trying to put this into words and I think contextualizing it case-by-case may be the easiest way for me to do this over time. Today I\u2019ll jump in with a look at what Top 40 hits mean to my teaching practice.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Repeat Offender<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m fascinated with pop culture. I revel in it. I\u2019ve talked about this before.<\/a> What I like about something like a pop song is that, though it may be \u201ccatchy,\u201d it\u2019s not necessarily something that you \u201clike\u201d right away. It doesn\u2019t take a genius to correlate repetition with \u2013 if not pleasure \u2013 at least acceptance. I\u2019ll provide a schmaltzy example: A few months ago, you couldn\u2019t sit through an hour of top 40 radio without hearing Florida\u2019s \u201cLow.\u201d It was\u2026 okay. Of course repeated exposure made it infectiously anthemic. The song (in the words of Gladwell), \u201ctipped:\u201d It was used in a sequence of Tropic Thunder<\/a><\/em>, was used as part of a controversial dance routine<\/a>, and – within my house – became the short-lived theme song for our resident basset hound.<\/p>\n So what? In terms of learning, we can take a lot away from \u201cLow,\u201d or \u201cPaper Planes,\u201d or \u201cBlame It.\u201d I didn\u2019t \u201clike\u201d these songs because someone told me about them. I didn\u2019t like them because I was regularly reading about how they were made, their history, or their relevance in modern day society (like a frivolous blog post). Instead, I liked these kinds of disposable songs because I experienced them first hand. I interacted regularly with them. I became immersed in contextual uses of these songs next to station IDs, ringtones, film montages, karaoke performances, and personal singing in the shower. We can\u2019t divorce learning from doing from experiencing in this sense. I\u2019m not going to like math by learning about it abstractly; I am<\/em> going to like that T.I. single* if I\u2019m involved with it. I may make comments about it online, discuss it with friends, and generally use it in my everyday practice. Why aren\u2019t we doing these same things in our classes? Why aren\u2019t English standards being situated within the current economic crisis? Why aren\u2019t we broadly engaging our students in curricula that immerse them in their own experiences? I realize many teachers are<\/em> indeed doing this and may balk at such questions. However, a look at the landscape of professional development and the continuously bemoaned world of standardization and assessment don\u2019t look toward a different approach at both schooling and education.<\/p>\n I\u2019d also caution people to look toward this analysis as a draconian endorsement of repetition. I do<\/em> think that revisiting concepts and ideas is a necessary piece of the learning process. However, the analogy of liking a song after hearing it the 37th<\/sup> time on the radio to improving better at English after the 37th<\/sup> essay isn\u2019t the strongest to make. Monitored, situated and repeated practice will get us where we want to go. I liked \u201cLow\u201d more once I contextualized it within a nightclub setting. And heard it in a movie. And talked about it being a \u201cguilty\u201d pleasure with friends. And unbashfully \u201cperformed\u201d it for a disinterested hound.<\/p>\n As a final thought, I\u2019d throw out that things as silly and frivolous as pop music and pop culture are necessary additions to our classrooms. Look what is on the student folders as they shuffle in. The patches on their backpacks. The distorted tones of interrupting cell phones. The music played during pep rallies. This <\/em>is the world that we, as a community, exist within. It is the world that is likely of more import to a student than what may be assessed within your classroom. However, this doesn\u2019t need to be a separate<\/em> world. Immersing popular culture within my classroom is more than trying to appear cool or hip to my students (they see through that charade immediately!). Instead, illustrating how these \u201coutside\u201d aspects of society not only connect to my curriculum but are actually at the heart of what I teach help students experience (more so than \u201cunderstand\u201d) the way that English is a part of what will help them become agents of change. The Chris Brown and Rihanna media storm, for instance, became a natural turning point of discussion and understanding when my class read Othello<\/em> and discussed domestic violence. I realize this may state the obvious, but it needs to be stressed: there is no textbook or curricular guideline that will teach you what aspects of contemporary culture to use in the classroom.<\/em> We need to engage and understand our society just as our students. We need to learn from them. As a community, we need to build on shared experiences within class.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * As an aside, I\u2019ve been thinking about how T.I. is exemplary of the current problem with hip-hop these days: it\u2019s forgettable. There are a handful of songs by T.I. that I like but I can\u2019t remember a single lyric by him. The draw for all of these songs are the hooks \u2013 sung by Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, etc. The main attraction \u2013 as he\u2019s supposed to be seen \u2013 is filler for each hook-laden hit. On the other hand, my fascination for T.I.\u2019s Road to Redemption<\/a><\/em> will require further elaboration at some later point.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\nTell people this is awesome:<\/h3>