Final Writing Sample

qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmrtyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqw

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Identity Formation

Hip Hop Pedagogy and its Ability to Influence

Positive Relationships with Academia in School Age Children from Urban Communities

Jalessa Noel Bryant

AS 191: American Studies Senior Thesis Advisor: Justin Gomer

University of California, Berkeley Fall 2011

2

DEDICATION

To God, life, and the ability to do for others. Jeremiah 18

Mold us as according to Your will so that we may be the image of You here on earth.

3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank God for somehow placing me and keeping me in this school when I thought I didn’t belong. Thank you for endurance, strength, and the ability to make things work for the betterment of all. Thank you to my mother, who pushed her dreams aside to raise four children. Mommy, no one knows selflessness like you. Thank you and I love you. I would also like to

acknowledge the rest of my family for supporting any and every decision that I make (although they may not agree initially) and loving me for the person I am and not who others think I should be. Thanks to my partner in crime, Darion Campbell for making me get off of Facebook or stop

watching TV while my thesis was sitting in a minimized box. I love you! Thank you to Professor Na’ilah Suad Bakaari, Ph.D., Maxine McKinney de Royston, Ph.D., Kihana, and

Jarvis, aka The Research Team, for all the resources, support and laughs throughout the year. Thank you to all of the professors whose classes and life work had an impact on this paper. I

aspire to be like you all someday. Thank you for leading the way. I’d like to thank Justin Gomer for being an awesome GSI and thesis advisor, you rock! Lastly, but certainly not least, to my friends: it has been an amazing 5 years and has finally come to an end. I’m so happy you all were there to go on this journey with me. This is certainly not a closed book, but a new chapter,

and I’m excited to see what happens next. Peace.

4

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................5

FOUNDATIONS: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS, THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION, & CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGIES ..............................................................................9

THEORIES: CHILDHOOD, IDENTITY FORMATION, & MUTUAL RESPONSIVENESS ..12

IDENTITY FORMATION: CULTURAL & ACADEMIC ..........................................................15

CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY AT WORK | MARSHALL LANGSTON ............18

POLICY:HOW NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AFFECTS TEACHERS & RACE TO THE TOP …………………………………………………………………………………………………....20

HIP HOP PEDAGOGY: CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM .....................................................23

DISCUSSION....…………………………………………………………………………………25

5

INTRODUCTION

The idea that students should be taught in a way that is relevant and thought provoking for them

may seem like an obvious statement. However, due to many of the constraints enforced by No

Child Left Behind, this idea has been placed on a back burner, while drill and kill methods have

claimed the forefront. In an increasingly diverse world, culturally relevant pedagogies will soon

become a necessity in the American Classroom, particularly in urban communities. Culturally

relevant pedagogy attempts to combat what Pierre Bourdieu claims are efforts to legitimize a

particular culture. Bourdieu further explains that one’s societal status is contingent upon their

proximity to that legitimized culture. Those who are furthest from that culture are “imbued with

a sense of their cultural unworthiness” (Olin Wright 2005, 19). In other words, culturally

relevant pedagogies “suggest that student ‘success’ is represented in achievement within the

current social structures extant in schools” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 467), or making a culture of

achievement more feasible for the students, as opposed to exploiting those who don’t fit within a

particular culture. In spaces where youth are raised to believe that they belong to the group that

is powerless among the powerful, it is important for them to recognize their potential as scholars,

community members, and independent thinkers. Recognizing their potential will enable them to

build strong identities and become confident academics.

In Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goods, Labaree

claims that public schools in America have three main purposes of education: social mobility,

social efficiency, and democratic equality (Labaree 1997, 41). Although these are important

ideologies to expose school-age children to, they are certainly not the only ideologies public

schools choose to utilize. The dominant purposes for education not only complicate a teacher

and student’s ability to work together on a student’s academic progress, but they also ignore the

6

other overlooked skills that are necessary for academic success including building social

networks, realizing how a willingness to learn depends on the way material is taught,

understanding the possibilities that are open to them the further they go along in their education,

understanding that they are capable of going above and beyond their parents’ achievement.

When educators teach in a way that students can make connections between new material and

the skills they already possess, students develop identities that are positive and excel greatly in

their educational endeavors. The simultaneous emphasis can be overwhelming, especially if the

items discussed in the classrooms are not directly relevant to the population that the educators

are serving. James Coleman’s work on social organizations helped to develop the theory of

Organizations as Natural Systems (Gamoran, Secada and Marrett 2000, 44), which asserts that in

the case that the formal structure has too many, or very complicated goals, the organization

should look to the informal structure to reduce or uncomplicate those goals.

Based on theories of childhood, this age is full of ignorance and curiosity (Aries 1962, 228),

leaving enough room for educators to use the skills they are already equipped with to acquire

additional skills for higher level academic engagement, such as critical dialogue. Thus, the most

impressionable age of children is in the elementary (or school-age) category. John Locke’s An

Essay on Human Understanding was one of the earlier attempts at configuring the ways people

come to understand and function in the world. Locke’s theory was that everyone was essentially

“Tabula Rasa” or empty vessels that needed to be filled with life experience in order to gain

knowledge (Eng 1980, 133). Younger children are yet to be included in the conversations held

on critical dialogue because of the study of human development, child development in particular,

is new to the academy. Not until the early 1930s did John Bowlby theorize that humans have

innate characteristics necessary for survival (Bowlby 1960, 94), revolutionizing many educators

7

and researchers previous asusmptions about what humans are capable of in their early stages of

development. People from low resourced areas are also left out of those conversations because

of inequalities throughout the public education system, particularly amongst students of color

and their counterparts (Hammond 2010, 52). Linda Darling- Hammond writes that in

multicultural communities where public schools are attempting to service a diverse community,

racial and economic segregation and integration make a difference in resources for students of

color to learn from. She states that “in integrated environments, differentials present teachers

with an even wider range of developed abilities” while “segregated environments lead to lowered

expectations of low income children and few models of success to be emulated” (Hammond

2010, 35) Therefore, amongst the most marginalized of these groups would be elementary school

aged children living in under-resourced areas.

Students from urban communities experience a lifestyle that students in other communities

would only see in the media. Na’ilah Suad- Nasir in Racialized Identities discusses how only a

limited amount of identity resources are available to students in an academic setting (Suad-Nasir

2011, 127). She also states that there are “multiple ways that society and learning settings often

offer conflicting messages simultaneously.” Deficits of identity resources and conflicting

messages that complicate the little resources urban students do have makes it difficult for them to

reap the benefits in a particular learning setting, which is contingent upon their success in

locating identity resources within it and vice versa (Suad-Nasir 2011, 127). Students from urban

communities, mostly students of color, have the task of trying to juggle multiple identities, most

of which are not found in learning settings. At the same time, public schools have historically

ignored the needs of students of color, mainly African American students, because it has so

many goals that aren’t considerate to the identities of students of color. Linda Darling Hammond

8

states that “throughout the 19th Century and the 20th, African Americans faced de facto and de

jure exclusion from public schools throughout the nation, as did Native Americans and,

frequently, Mexican Americans” (Hammond 2010, 29). She continues to explain that there has

been an assumption that because additional anti-discriminatory laws have been added to the

Constitution, that those inequalities have been erased from American society and now the

students to be at fault for their failures. This is not the case. Darling-Hammond continues by

stating that there are five major reasons why inequalities in urban education still exist: poverty,

unequal distribution of resources, inadequate teachers, lack of high-quality curriculum, and

dysfunctional learning environments (Hammond 2010, 30). Ironically, the No Child Left Behind

law encouraged the continuity of those inequalities by drastically restricting federal funding to

the most needy schools. Because of these inequalities and the country’s inability to wash its

hands of them, it is clear urban students need a different pedagogical system that suits their

identities.

Hip Hop pedagogy is one solution. Jeffery Duncan-Andrade states that Hip Hop Pedagogy is a

technique for teaching that falls under the category of culturally relevant pedagogy where “the

students [are] not only engaged and able to use this expertise and personality as subjects of the

post-industrial world to make powerful connections to canonical texts, but are able to have fun

learning about a culture and a genre of music with which they have great familiarity” (Duncan-

Andrade and Morrell 2002, 91).

In this paper, I argue that urban culture is a largely overlooked resource of marginalized

communities that serves as an important identifier from which students mold their academic

identities to. In addition, I hope to show how students would benefit from engaging in culturally

9

relevant pedagogy at a young age as opposed to the middle and high school years. I hope to

analyze a type of culturally relevant pedagogy, hip hop pedagogy, and its influence on identity

formation within the informal structure of the urban school, i.e. the culture and community in

which the students are immersed in everyday, using the aforementioned theory. With the threat

of the return of traditional education upon us due to the stress that No Child Left Behind has

implored upon public schools of America, there are many reasons to create culturally connected

foundations earlier than later in modern education.

FOUNDATIONS: SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS, THE PURPOSES OF

EDUCATION, & CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGIES

Adam Gamoran et al discuss organizational models they believe schools operate under. He

states that the efficacy of the school’s organizational strategy is dependent on how well

“background influences are taken into account” within those organizational models (Gamoran,

Secada and Marrett 2000, 39). What complicates these efforts is the question: how does one

institution accommodate the three overarching goals of education: social mobility, social

efficiency, and democratic equality and make it so that they are fitting for its constituents and

follow district, state, and national objectives? Social mobility is an essential part of the

American Dream. From primary school to higher education, individual students with a

competitive advantage join in the struggle for desirable social positions to better their socio-

economic status later in life. Social efficiency, ensuring that there are people to fulfill all the

necessary roles in the future, is another task of the public schooling system. Youth need to be

able to carry out useful, economic roles with competence. Lastly, democratic equality, meaning

that students need to be politically competent so by the time they’re of age, they are educated and

10

informed voters. The public schooling system encounters quite the task trying to address all of

these goals for students, especially with the strict standards states have to set. While democratic

equality prepares students for a range of roles in the community, social efficiency promotes a

structure that limits these possibilities in the name of economic necessity. Social mobility gives

students the educational credentials they need to get ahead in the structure or maintain their

current position, but inequitable distribution of resources to the most needy communities & lack

of support from the state to those communities via federal education acts, social mobility has

actually become quite stagnant. By no means do these goals fall in place with each other. Under

the definition of Organization of Natural Systems, when a school has complex and/or multiple

goals, there is a certain degree of conflict, in which the most important goal is not quite visible.

Gamoran et al states that the organizational leadership must consider the informal structure of the

organization to solve or uncomplicated those goals. In the case of American public schools, the

formal structure is set via mandated curriculum and the presumed goals of the institution. The

informal structure, however, is largely dictated by its constituents and the communities from

which they come. The informal structure for urban communities specifically is exceptionally

diverse in its representation of cultures, races/ethnicities, and classes. Gloria Ladson- Billings

writes on how traditional and neoconservative traditional theories on education, “theories of

reproduction,” (regurgitation of information) are assumed to be default theories that do not need

to be made explicit because they tend to be more concretely settled within practical theory than

others. On the other hand, more inclusive theories, such as culturally relevant theories of

education are viewed as overly theoretical, which Ladson-Billings believes to be a consequence

of the positions of power and privilege lodged in the realm of public education (Ladson-Billings

1995, 469). Despite the conservative backlash, Ladson-Billings has discovered some teachers

11

who are in fact, very successful. She discusses how microsolutions (ESL, Spanish immersion)

and macrosolutions (cultural ecology) are either too simple or too grand to address the issues of

cultural mismatch in schools. She explains her idea behind culturally relevant pedagogy as

“getting students to ‘choose’ academic excellence” by following the beliefs that “students must

achieve academic success, develop and/or maintain cultural competence, and develop a critical

consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order” (Ladson-

Billings 1995, 160). In Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Ladson-Billings

documents teachers who have successful culturally relevant methods for teaching, success

defined by students who statistically don’t fare well with more traditional methods being able to

not only do well but maintain cultural competence and gain grade appropriate academic skill

sets. She states that “each [teacher] suggests that student ‘success’ is represented in achievement

within the current social structures extant in schools. Thus the goal of education becomes how to

‘fit’ students constructed as ‘other’ by virtue of their race/ethnicity, language, or social class into

a hierarchal structure that is defined as a meritocracy” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 466). Since the

goals of education are reflective of how American society is socially constructed, it is inevitable

that using this meritocratic hierarchy, all the “others” will be on the bottom rung. In But That’s

Just Good Teaching! Ladson-Billings goes into a discussion on how the education reform needs

to transform itself from programmatic reform to “educational theorizing about teaching itself and

propose a theory of culturally focused pedagogy” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 466). In addition to

new educational theories, it is also necessary to direct these reforms to age groups that haven’t

been exposed to culturally cognizant curriculum. A huge critique of changing the way lower

levels of education function is that it will intercede with the elementary agenda and teachers will

12

breeze over new foundations. Deborah Stipek writes an opinion on federal education standards

being applied to preschool students. She states that

“If the test does not assess communication skills, comprehension, metacognitive skills, problem-solving ability, reasoning, self-regulation, or the ability to collaborate and get along with peers, these are not likely to be emphasized in the instructional program and if assessment of programs does not include observations or other strategies for evaluating the social-emotional climate and efforts to teach children good physical habits or social skills, then these important qualities of preschool education are likely to receive less attention” (Stipek).

Culturally relevant pedagogy aims to not only prevent the total standardization of education, but

to maintain in a way that will respect the relationship between academic excellence, human

development, and cultural competence.

THEORIES: CHILDHOOD, MUTUAL RESPONSIVENESS, & ATTACHMENT

Sixteenth century conceptions of childhood believed children in their infancy & toddler years to

be virtually useless, as their physical and mental abilities disabled them from contributing to

productive work (Aries 1962, 39). Prior to the stage when children can walk and talk, they’re

viewed as burdensome to the agricultural families. Anytime afterward, they’re assets (Heywood

2001, 158). The European Scientific Revolution had a profound influence on American

technology, which inevitably affected home life. When American society was sustained by

smaller family style communities, work was distributed evenly throughout to all of those who

were capable of contributing to their progress (Heywood 2001, 154). As the resources for

families to sustain themselves were increasingly being created outside of the home, the need for

children to participate in apprenticeships, at least for private, familial reasons, was on the

decline. Ideologies around childhood evolved from work to pleasure. Philippe Aries writes on

how the attitudes women during the sixteenth century and how they changed as they began to

spend more time with their children in an intimate and affectionate way. Early institutions of

education were religion-based, as it was seen as a family responsibility to teach other subjects

13

such as agricultural work. As women took up the responsibilities of caring for the child’s needs

for longer periods of time, coddling and interaction with adults came to be considered spoils to a

child (Heywood 2001, 155). This posed a particularly frustrating predicament for religious

instructors, as childhood innocence and ignorance were new ideas to pedagogues as well.

Following the construction of the school house in the seventeenth century, instructors began to

notice the relationships between the ages of their students and their abilities to learn particular

material. Aries writes the Masters of the school class reasoned that the youth of pupil’s means

that their faculties cannot be sufficiently developed. Thus, it would be recognized that there was

a close connection between age, capacity, and school class” (Aries 1962, 228) and the concept of

childhood was marked by class performance and comprehension ability and/or disability. John

Locke’s Tabula Rasa theory on early childhood cognitive abilities pioneered conversations on

how children operate within the capacity that Aries speaks of, however, later developments in

children’s studies will prove Locke’s theory to be far too depriving of the innate capabilities of

human beings from the beginnings of life (Heywood 2001, 23). Not until the 1930’s did society

begin to investigate child development and the socialization of youth. Prout and James write that

“the concept of ‘development’ inextricably links the biological facts of immaturity to the social

aspects of childhood” (James and Prout 1997, 10), therefore consequent studies on childhood

viewed children as simpletons. The development of “Attachment Theory” by John Bowlby and

Mary Ainsworth & the “Theory Theory” by Noam Chomsky contributed new frameworks to the

discussion on childhood ability. Chomsky’s Theory Theory was a new addition to the field of

cognitive psychology, in that it is a theory simply stating that children have theories about the

world and are innately consumed with figuring out their place in it (Gopnik, Meltzoff and

Patricia 1999, 155). Adding to the innate activities of children, Mary Ainsworth built off of

14

Bowlby’s evolutionary adaptiveness theory, which suggested that via evolution we’ve created

ways to stay alive and one of those ways is to stay in close proximity to an adult. This lead to

the creation of the Internal Working Model, the basis of an attachment relationship to a caregiver

that begins working in early childhood (Ainsworth and Wall 1978, 13). The growth of the

cognitive psychology field in recent years has enabled researchers to conduct further studies that

build on the innate ability of children in their early years, thus encouraging educators and other

academics to focus on more forward thinking strategies for child development. Allison Gopnik

says “we change our ideas about the world just by taking in more and more information about it.

Babies could end up linking particular inputs to each other and particular outputs in this sort of

piecemeal way” (Gopnik, Meltzoff and Patricia 1999, 149). Gopnik further discusses mutual

imitation and its connection to the attachments that children are supposed to create in infancy to

adults. Although attachment theory takes the stance that babies have an evolutionary

dependency on the elders in their immediate space, Gopnik states that adults have a

corresponding attraction to children that maintains that relationship. Thomacello et al.’s shared

intentionality theory reinforces this ideology. They state that infants understand mutual

responsiveness on a behavioral level, like imitation, because there is collaboration on a shared

goal (Tomasello, et al. 2005, 680). These are the beginnings of not only trustworthy, relationship

building, but the acquisition of skills and pro-social behaviors. Gopnik states that “imitation is

the motor for culture” (Gopnik, Meltzoff and Patricia 1999, 167), proving that when nature and

nurture work together instead of in opposition or competition with each other, culture is

constructed. Thomacello states that this is established easily in very young children because of

the “developmental preeminence of attachment relationships that children have with adults”

(Tomasello, et al. 2005, 693) . This is important to note because the success or failure of

15

children to be able to carry these relationship building skills into society is not necessarily the

sole duty of their caregivers, but of adults in general because having successful attempts at

mutual responsiveness with other people will only encourage future healthy relationships.

IDENTITY FORMATION: CULTURAL & ACADEMIC

According to Lightfoot et al., children develop a sense of themselves in relation to society via

two pathways: socialization and personality formation. Socialization occurs in the spaces that

are culturally relevant to children and reinforced as such via their caregivers. It begins in the

home and radiates out to other spaces like daycare, preschool, etc. Lightfoot states that

socialization becomes apparent in “a variety of contexts in which [children] become conversant

with their culture’s funds of knowledge and rules of behavior” (Lightfoot, Cole and Cole 2009,

320). These funds of knowledge and rules of behavior help establish a child’s personality &

identity. The initial formation of personality is present in infancy as temperament, which

remains stable over time, and due to many of the socializing messages that they receive, children

are left to “interpret and select” what works for them in their cultural space, integrating their

developing cognitive understanding, emotional responses and habits with people and objects

within that space. The following will examine two of these “messages” that most affect children

from urban neighborhoods: ethnic and socio-cultural identifiers, the pro-social behaviors

constructed as a result of students interpreting them in a functional way, and the anti-social

behaviors that emerge if they are not.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s ethnic doll experiment is well known for its ability to display how

African American children define themselves entirely in terms of the majority, which disables

them from “seeing the importance of their own families and communities in shaping their

16

identities (Lightfoot, Cole and Cole 2009, 309). Ann Beuf reported that the same experiment in

other minority communities “made evident [children’s] understanding of economic and social

circumstances that make their lives difficult in contrast to the lives of white people” (Lightfoot,

Cole and Cole 2009, 310). In both studies, the notion that white is normal and that the chances

for survival are optimum if one’s cultural repertoire is similar to that, is one that permeates the

mind at a very young age. Researchers were also able to record instances of children who are

able to identify difference and their placement in the social scheme as soon as language develops

(ages 2 - 3). Dr. Beverley Tatum, Ph.D. discusses that concept of constancy in identity and the

conflict that children below six have with the idea that certain features are “fixed and will not

change” (Tatum 1997, 36). In “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”

she reflects on a grocery store conversation with her son in which he has reported that his white

classmate told him that he is Black because “he drinks too much Chocolate milk” and she’s

noticed a change in his activity (no longer drinking chocolate milk). Her son is simply perplexed

to discover that his Blackness is not an interchangeable commodity. She attempts to identify the

sources of pride within Blackness that he is able to comprehend and build from that to generate

positive resources for him to resort back to in times of cultural confliction. Margaret Caughy

states that “differences in the form of ethnic socialization bear importantly on children’s

cognitive abilities and behavioral adjustments” (Lightfoot, Cole and Cole 2009, 311). Tatum

Jr.’s dilemma is proof that children have these challenges around 2 and 3 years of age. Tatum’s

attempt at reconciling her son’s negative response to a confrontation with his identity is a

genuine effort to maintain pro-social behavior as an adult, caregiver to a vulnerable child. In

order for children to maintain their ethnic identities and acknowledge them as something that is

beautiful and unique, there needs to be concerted effort towards pro-social behaviors by all

17

adults, especially those who are most responsible for socializing them. Once the mutual

responsiveness is no longer established, rejection of identity, rebellion against institutionalized

authority and rejection of seemingly unrelated affairs will become the anti-social behaviors that

affect a child’s future. In Learning to Trust, Watson & Ecken write about how attachment theory

proves that children are biologically wired to “acquire the desire to be cooperative and prosocial

as a result of experiencing sensitive and responsive care” (Watson and Ecken 2003, 11). They

continue to discuss how those who have insecure attachments (mild and severe antisocial

behaviorisms) are likely to withdraw from social relationships and/or become focused on

satisfying their own needs through “Dependency, control, or aggression” (Watson and Ecken

2003, 11) because their needs are not responded to in an appropriate manner. As a secondary

caregiver, a teacher would not only have to have an insecurely attached child in the classroom,

but also take responsibility for nurturing that model that has been wired to think negatively of

social interactions, especially if the teacher’s goal is to have a peaceful class. Watson discusses

that keeping in mind children are works in progress and their internal working models can be

shaped and molded to produce prosocial outputs if they are receiving the correct inputs helps

teachers ensure the right inputs are being given to a student who’s having difficulty. Suad-Nasir

discusses in Racialized Identities, the idea of there being an identity trajectory. She states that

“the bulk of what students will take from learning environments is the accumulation of multiple

small scale interactions where students are given access to learning or not, where their identities

as learners are afforded or constrained” (Suad-Nasir 2011, 132). The fact that identity is so fluid

should not only encourage teachers but students as well. The resources of one learning setting

are not necessarily the same resources that another setting provides. DeVore and Gentilcore use

a restorative justice model for at-risk youth that allows them to “discipline young people without

18

violating their dignity,” that way “we hold them accountable without further damaging their self

esteem and we increase the likelihood that they will ultimately desire to become better citizens”

(DeVore and Gentilcore 1999, 100). This model gives students tools with which to create their

own sense of agency, a characteristic many insecurely attached children do not possess.

However, internal working models are not transformed easily. Jabari Mahiri says that “students

responses of either resistance or acceptance are at least in part predicted on the specific nature of

pedagogy and curriculum to which they are exposed” (Mahiri 1998, 2), therefore strategic and

efficient scaffolding is necessary to ensure successful transitioning of disruptive behaviors.

CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY AT WORK | MARSHAL LANGSTON

Maxine McKinney de Royston, PhD completed a dissertation on “Marshall Langston,” an

Afrocentric oriented private school in the Bay Area. Marshall is a small school with less than

thirty students and eleven teachers handpicked by the founder and director of the school, Gwen

Marshall. Their ages range from kindergarten to middle school age and most are low income

students. ML was founded in the midst of the Afrocentricity and Black Power movements, thus

its heavy influence on African Centered Pedagogy. Statistically, eighty percent of the students

who’ve attended Marshall Langston graduate from college. De Royston’s research was on what

in particular about that school yields those types of results later in life. Using participant

observation, surveys, and interviews, de Royston shows that particular activities and ways of

teaching help students establish academic identities, help teachers scaffold strategically, and

provide parents with the culturally competent pedagogy they were looking for for their

child(ren). As Suad-Nasir discusses in Racialized Identities, “learning settings provide identities

resources” (Suad-Nasir 2011, 110). In these particular settings, three particular resources stood

19

out as efficient forms of scaffolding: pedagogy matched the historical foundations of the school,

the immediate agency and access for the students, and reciprocity of students, parents, and staff.

Historical Foundations

Marshall Langston was founded during a vital turning point in history which is permeated

throughout its pedagogical creed. The teachers, the curriculum, and the style of teaching all have

cultural implications that can be easily located in history. Floyd Beachum writes in Cultural

Collision and collusion: Reflections on Hip Hop, Culture, Values, and Schoolsabout the History

of educational attitudes and how education went from being liberating to confining (Beachum

2011, 23). Gwen Marshall has reversed this effect by maintaining what is largely left out of

public schools, cultural identifiers. Many of the alumni share with de Royston that they didn’t

feel as though any particular identities were being pressed upon them. In fact they felt as though

their identities were being reinforced and they felt more comfortable to speak and act freely

(McKinney de Royston 2011, 115).

Agency & Access

The set up of Marshall Langston delegates a lot of responsibility to the students. Alumni made

comments about feeling very “visible” and working harder because of a fear of slacking off. The

morning circle that took place every morning included students, staff, and parents to speak freely

about current events or issues within their school community (McKinney de Royston 2011, 116).

Mahiri would say this is a healthy practice. He states that “[teachers and parents need to become

sources of resistance themselves to the ideology and practices of cultural domination and

20

exploitation that permeate institutional structures in this society, including its schools” (Mahiri

1998, 11).

Reciprocity

The teaching style of Marshall Langston was very interactive. Even at a young age, student

interacted with their lessons and peers, feeling as though “this connection with the community

was also an interconnected one that related to one person’s well being with that of others”

(McKinney de Royston 2011, 118). This combats Ladson-Billings’ statement on public school

and how it “remains an alien and hostile place. The hostility is manifest in the ‘styling’ and

‘postering’ that the school rejects” (Ladson-Billings 1995, 161). The system of reciprocity,

where no one person is dominating another, helps aid the hostility that public schools tend to

foster to students of color.

McKinney de Royston displays how accommodating a culturally relevant pedagogy is to not

only the students but the teachers and parents of the children. It has long lasting effects that

carry outside of the classroom and very young children are guided by their not-so-much older

peers to guide each other through their academic identity trajectory. Fortunately, ML is small

enough that this type of pedagogy is functional for the student body. Public schools on the other

hand are facing quite a different situation and educators are facing some harsh realities while

attempting to strategize for better results.

21

POLICY: HOW NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AFFECTS TEACHERS & RACE TO THE

TOP

Robert Beck defines traditional education as “classrooms in which the major portion of the time

is given over to hearing the recitation of individual students” (Beck 1956, 3). He continues by

describing that a majority of the teaching methods were oriented around keeping classroom order

and assigning passages to memorize. Prior to Horace Mann igniting the modern education

movement, school was largely focused around agricultural and religious learning. Children’s

identities were largely connected to the trade taught to them by their families as well as their

religious affiliation. Education prior to the mid-19th century was predominantly rural and highly

localized. The school emerged as an important community institution, often serving multiple

roles at once. Most of what children were taught in one-room schoolhouses were basic recitation

of Bible verses and outdoor activities were centered around agricultural skill sets. Horace

Mann’s vision for public schools was a little broader. John Andrew Wimpey writes in the Phi

Delta Kappan that “Mann fought vigorously against sectarian catechisms as an offensive practice

in public schools” as well as abolishing any physical punishments invoked on students that

attended and the education of women (Wimpey 1959, 208). Perhaps Mann’s most well known

claim to fame is his theory of democratic education, in which he believed that education should

be “universal and free”. Since then, public education has attempted at keeping religious

celebrations separate from the school setting, outlawed physical punishments, and has been

largely dominated by women in education related positions. However, after the enactment of the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind, modern

education has taken a step backwards. The orientation of NCLB is a system of reprimands that

22

says if schools aren’t meeting the standards set by the act on a consistent basis, Title 1 funding,

funding only offered to the poorest schools, will be taken away. Simultaneously, the Race to the

Top initiative is active, in which grants are given to schools who craft creative ways to meet their

academic goals. In order to protect the low performing schools from closing down completely,

their curriculum has largely been converted to reflect efforts to get students to pass standardized

tests as opposed to actively engaging with material, understanding concepts, and fostering a love

for learning. Teachers are struggling to make classroom content as clear as they can in short

amounts of time. The connection of students with the material learned in classrooms has been

severed with this in legislative action. United State Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, stated

in an interview with Joan Richardson, that he promotes the use of sports culture to encourage

academic excellence. He says that “with the proper coaching in the right context with a laser-

like focus on academics first and sports as the carrot, the reward for good academic wok, I think

sports can have a huge and positive role.. and be a tremendous vehicle for teaching students

really important life lessons ” (Duncan 2009, 29). Race to the Top encourages this type of

creativity and gives financial incentive for those creative tasks, however with NCLB still

functional, the system ends up giving money to those who have enough while those who are

deprived continuously lose funding. In addition, NCLB has rendered teachers unable to craft

their ways of teaching to their style. The federal government would prefer what Bourdieu and

Passeron refer to as “culturally arbitrary curricula” where students are taught with canonical text

without developing skills in a way that is culturally relevant, otherwise known as symbolic

violence against those whose cultures are repeatedly ignored in those texts. In reference to

traditional education, Beck states that education was “based largely on untested assumptions

about children, about learning, about the aims of the schooling process. It was uniformed by

23

scientific research on any of these subjects because it antedated not only the existence but even

the idea of such research” (Beck 1956, 3). The new national agendas are creating larger gaps in

actual competency than prior to No Child Left Behind since states didn’t start off at the same

competency levels initially. Being that there are plentiful resources for researchers to pull from,

now that multiple studies have been done on how children learn and many theories have been

generated about how public schools are run, there is no justifiable reason as to why any school

should feel as though they have to resort to those traditional methodologies in order to because

states are finding band-aid solutions for inadequacies to keep their funding & meet state

standards, especially if they have already been proven to be ineffective.

HIP HOP PEDAGOGY: CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM

Hip Hop is a large part of urban culture. It is not only represented through music, but art, dance,

clothing, and other merchandise. It is a lifestyle that many urban students are raised into and

interact with on a daily basis. Duncan-Andrade & Morrell state that hip hop pedagogy is a

technique for teaching that falls under the category of culturally relevant pedagogy where “the

students are not only engaged and able to use this expertise and personality as subjects of the

post industrial world to make powerful connections to canonical texts, but are able to have fun

learning about a culture and a genre of music with which they have great familiarity” (Duncan-

Andrade and Morrell 2002, 91). Because of the way hip hop has permeated throughout America

Hip Hop pedagogy has the potential to not only benefit urban communities but find common

ground amongst those who have cultural misunderstandings. Lamont Hill states that “popular

culture texts provide a powerful window through which to view young people’s understanding

and responses to this reality” (Hill 2006, 26). There are still some who are dissuaded by hip

24

hop’s influence or even if it has a positive enough message to send into schools. Priya Pramar

writes in 19 Urban Questions that what’s “more important than finding hip hop is recognizing

and learning its history and origin if we expect any level of education as credible or valuable

cultural texts” (Pramar 2010, 92), which reestablishes the cultural aspect of knowing concrete

historical foundations in the classroom before simply implementing a new style of teaching.

Beachum’s history of educational attitudes portrays education as being “synonymous with

liberation” and “being somebody” for people of color (Beachum 2011, 5-9). Establishing a

concrete foundation is something the current public education system is having trouble with

because it’s trying to straddle all of these different goals and create an extremely complex school

culture that isn’t fitting for urban students. According to Beachum, these foundations are what

save urban students from forgetting liberation education because the “philosophy has been

challenged by the harsh reality of urban life” (Beachum 2011, 14). The condition of urban

communities has been pushed to the side for many years. Similar to the education laws, the

property tax laws were seen as an equitable way to distribute funds to communities for support.

However, the migration of mostly White families and businesses to more suburban areas left the

urban communities with very little generated funding. Many of the frustrations members of

urban communities are facing have translated into a culture of resistance, which is greatly

represented in Hip Hop music. Students from urban communities were not around to see much

of the historical foundations of this resistance culture and therefore claim it because that is the

identity resource readily available to them. Hip Hop pedagogy hopes to end the disconnect

between actions, identities, and histories and build bridges with critical dialogue and literary skill

strengthening exercises. Jamal Cooks writes that “students need to know that the academic or

formal writing is what is required of them in certain areas and that they must master how to

25

switch back and forth between the different genres to be successful” (Cooks 2004, 76). Modern

education takes a backward stance on how students and educators should think about education.

Suad- Nasir says that of the practices she experienced in her research they offered young people

the opportunity to contribute personally to the practice, to have something of themselves take up

and valued” (Suad-Nasir 2011, 40), which is why Hip Hop pedagogy would be a great

suggestion for urban youth.

DISCUSSION

The younger one is, the more life one has to live. The age of childhood over time has been

glorified, reflected upon, seen as a time of innocence and spoils. Society still clings to the idea

that children need to enjoy childhood by engaging in activities that they will forget, eating sugar-

filled candies and falling down to learn better for next time. When this childhood is thought of,

society assumes a middle class childhood with ideal familial and environmental conditions, but

urban children are up against more odds because they don’t have academic or social identifiers

that work congruently with the modern education or social systems. The history of hip hop

encompasses many of their identifiers, but hip hop as Priya Parmar states has “appropriated and

commodified the culture to such an extent that the true spirit of Hip Hop has been ‘raped’ or

stripped of its art form all for capitalistic gains” (Pramar 2010, 94). If educators and students

commit to culturally relevant resources early in their childhood, like the students of Marshall

Langston, they will understand the history of these conditions and be able to “problematize their

own complicit reinforcement of those hegemonic dynamics through some of their naïve actions”

(Hayes 2010, 33). Educators cannot continue to ignore that identity formation starts when

children are infants. The earlier healthy relationships are built with people, institutions, or

26

objects, the stronger the bond so long as the child receives positive responses from the stimulus.

Elementary school children are old enough and curious enough to understand what goes on in

their communities. Continuing to ignore this fact is one of the reasons urban youth turn to

resistance and other forms of survival. Their relationship with their environment is neglectful.

The classroom is a space where that can be controlled for if allowed.

Using culturally relevant pedagogies will not hurt students because educators are using materials

that are already in proximity and well known to the students. The task of educators is to add

academic value to those proximal identifiers. If these identifies were not in proximity to student

knowledge, they would not be culturally relevant. Current methods like standardized tests

promote an “arbitrary culture” (Hayes 2010, 31) which symbolically violates urban children’s

rights to be educated in a way that help them strengthen their relationship with academic subjects

and skills. Regardless, children will create their identities off of what is, indeed, present.

Therefore, if what is present doesn’t fit their reality, they’ll exhibit anti-social behaviors because

the current system doesn’t provide inputs that register with them, hence, bad outcomes.

Policy controls a majority of these outcomes. The No Child Left Behind Act places ‘punishment’

on the educational agenda, which is not one of the supported goals of education. Yet it dictates

so much of how our public education system functions. If Race to the Top were given the

opportunity to operate alone, perhaps with a more funding friendly testing intiative, teachers may

have a chance to not only enjoy their jobs, but also the students will enjoy education, create

bonds with it, and stay connected to it because they feel as though they can survive in it. Darwin

theorizes that the world is about “survival of the fittest.” It is a human instinct to perish in a zone

where you are not meant to survive. Urban children are quickly falling to a system that is easily

27

controllable. Using Hip Hop to motivate and encourage critical dialogue and thinking could

revolutionize their communities.

28

1. Ainsworth,MaryD.Salter,andS.Wall.PatternsofAttachment:APsychologicalStudyofthe

StrangeSituation.Hillsdale,NJ:LawrenceErlbaumAssociates,Inc.,Publishers,1978.

2. Aries,Philippe.CenturiesofChildhood:ASocialHistoryofFamilyLife.NewYork:JohnathanCape,Ltd.,1962.

3. Beachum,Floyd.CulturalCollision&Collusion.NewYork,NY:PeterLangPublishing,inc.,2011.

4. Beck,RobertH.TheThreeR'sPlus:WhatToday'sSchoolsareTryingtoDoandWhy.UniversityofMinnesotaPress,1956.

5. Burton,LindaM.,RobinL.Jarrett."IntheMix,YetontheMargins:ThePlaceofFamiliesinUrbanNeighborhoodandChildDevelopmentResearch."JournalofMarriageandFamily,62,no.4(Nov.,2000):1114-1135.

6. Cooks,Jamal."WritingforSomething:Essays,Raps,andWritingPreferences."TheEnglishJournal(NationalCouncilofTeachersofEnglish)94,no.1(Sept.2004):72-76.

7. DeVore,Donald,andKevinGentilcore."BalancedandRestorativeJusticeandEducationalProgrammingforYouthAt-Risk."TheClearingHouse(Taylor&Francis,Ltd.)73,no.2(Nov.-Dec.1999):96-100.

8. Duncan,Arne,interviewbyJoanRichardson.""QualityEducationisOurMoonShot:"AnInterviewwithSecretaryofEducationArneDuncan."ThePhiDeltaKappan.PhiDeltaKappaInternational,(Sep.2009):24-29.

9. Duncan-Andrade,Jeffery,andErnestMorrell."PromotingAcademicLiteracywithUrbanYouthThroughEngagingHipHopCulture."TheEnglishJournal(NationalCouncilofTeachersofEnglish)91,no.6(Jul.2002):88-92.

10. Gamoran,Adam,WalterG.Secada,andCoraB.Marrett."TheOrganizationalContextofTeachingandLearning:ChangingtheoreticalPersepctives."EditedbyM.Hallinan.HandbookoftheSociologyofEducation(KluwerAcademic/Plenum),2000:37-63.

11. Gopnik,Alison,AndrewN.Meltzoff,andKuhlK.Patricia.TheScientistintheCrib:WhatEarlyLearningTellsUsAbouttheMind.NewYork,NY:HarperCollinsPublishers,1999.

12. Hayes,Kecia."WhyTeachinUrbanSettings?"Chap.2in19UrbanQuestions,editedbyShirleyR.Steinberg,27-40.NewYork,NY:PeterLangPublishing,Inc.,2010.

13. Heywood,Colin.AHistoryofChildhood:ChildrenandChildhoodintheWestfromMedievaltoModernTimes.Malden,MA:BlackwellPublishers,2001.

29

14. Hill,Lamont."UsingJay-ZtoReflectonPost9/11RaceRelations."TheEnglishJournal96,no.2(Nov.2006):23-27.

15. James,Allison,andAlanProut.ConstructingandReconstructingChildhood:ContemporaryIssuesintheSociologicalStudyofChildhood.Washington,D.C.:FalmerPress,1997.

16. Ladson-Billings,Gloria."ButThat'sJustGoodTeaching!TheCaseforCulturallyRelevantPedagogy."TheoryintoPractice(Taylor&Francis,Ltd.)32,no.3(Summer1995):159-165.

17. Ladson-Billings,Gloria."TowardaTheoryofCulturallyRelevantPedagogy."AmericanEducationalResearchJournal32,no.3(Fall1995):465-491.

18. Lightfoot,Cynthia,MichaelCole,andSheilaR.Cole."SocialandEmotionalDevelopmentinEarlyChildhood."InTheDevelopmentofChildren.NewYork:WorthPublishers,2009.

19. Mahiri,Jabari.ShootingforExcellence:AfricanAmericanandYouthCultureinNewCenturySchools.Non-Journal,UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley,Urbana:NationalCouncilofTeachersofEnglish,1998,1-181.

20. Marshall,HerminH.,RhonnaS.Weinstein."ClassroomFactorsAffectingStudents'Self-Evaluations:AnInteractionalModel.ReviewofEducationResearch.54,no.3(Autumn,1984):301-325.

21. McClaffertyet.al.,KarenA.'ChallengesofUrbanEducation."Albany,NY:StateUniversityofNewYorkPress,Albany,2000.

22. McKinney,SueanneE.,GloriaD.Campbell-Whately,CathyD.Kea."ManagingStudentBehaviorinUrbanClassrooms:TheRoleofTeacherABCAssessments."TheClearingHouse,79,no.1,ClassroomManagementforMiddleandSecondarySchools(Sept.-Oct.,2005):16-20.

23. McKinneydeRoyston,Maxine.TeachingtotheSpirit:The“Hidden”CurriculumofAfricanAmericanEducation.UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley,Berkeley,CA:UnpublishedDoctoralDissertation,2011.

24. Pramar,Priya.DoesHipHopHaveaHomeinUrbanEducation.Vol.2,chap.6in19UrbanQuestions,editedbyShirleyR.Steinberg,87-100.NewYork:PeterLangPublishing,Inc.,2010.

25. Sengstock,PhD.,MaryC."VoicesofDiversity."Detroit,MI:WayneStateUniversity,2009.

26. Suad-Nasir,Na'ilah.RacializedIdentities.Stanford,CA:StanfordUniversityPress,2011.

27. Tatum,Beverly."WhyAreAlltheBlackKidsSittingTogetherintheCafeteria?".NewYork,NY:BasicBooks,1997.

30

28. Tomasello,Michael,MalindaCarpenter,JosepCall,TanyaBehne,andHenrikeMoll."UnderstandingandSharingIntentions:TheOriginsofCulturalCognition."BehavioralandBrainSciences28,no.5(2005):675-735.

29. Watson,Marilyn,andLauraEcken.LearningtoTrust:TransformingDifficultElementaryClassroomsThroughDevelopmentalDiscipline.SanFrancisco,CA:Jossey-Bass,2003.

30. Wimpey,J.A."After100Years:HOraceMann'sinfluenceintoday'sschools."ThePhiDeltaKappan40,no.5(1959):206-208.