Nancy Avelar

April 3, 2016
SED 322: Annotations
Annotations, Youth Popular Culture, Pedagogy, and Curriculum in Urban Classrooms

I sought to make their engagement with popular cultural texts (particularly films, music,
and television) a centerpiece of intellectual inquiry in the classroom.

This quote very much reminds me of the class discussion about Jeanettes experience in the
classroom. She took time to plan out her lesson and really think about how could she get class
participation which involved including popular culture, clips on Dragon Ball Z. She had great
success, so it is something to keep in mind for my future lesson plans.

The film is never treated as a text to be studied, and whats worse is that this leads to a
tacit agreement between student and teacher that youth popular culture is simply a
schools tool of pacification unworthy of intellectual interrogation.

I agree with the text, because growing up popular culture was rarely incorporated by teachers and
when it was, it was used as a reward which typically was a movie. We would not analyze or
critique the piece but it was a day that involved no work, and was thought of a day off to relax. I
think if popular culture would have been incorporated more, and analyzed to get us thinking, we
would have a better perspective on medias effect on the public.

These studies only further confirm Lukes (1997) preceding argument that there is an
urgent need for educators to engage constructively with media, popular and youth
culture to better understand how these discourses structure childhood, adolescence and
students knowledge

The article states how there are studies that suggest educators should engage constructively with
media. And I believe this is true because todays kids are submerged in media, and one of the
ways that we will be able to connect with them is to bring media and popular culture into the
classroom and actually discuss, analyze, and learn from it.

It is difficult to picture a scenario where we reproach a child for reading too much, but
we are quick to chastise children for spending too much time in front of electronic
media.

This is true, but sometimes kids are spending a lot of time focused on the wrong media. I have a
daughter myself and would not be happy is she was spending hours on media. Although it is
good, too much media can be bad and also it depends on the outlets. Girls tend to focus on
celebrities like Kylie Jenner, who arent challenging their mind but rather focusing on aesthetic
comparisons and jealousy which is not a media choice I would like my students to focus on.

. has found that urban students, particularly urban students of color, are missportrayed as being intellectually disengaged. In fact, what we find in discussions with
urban youngsters is not necessarily that they want less time in classrooms; rather they
want classrooms that are more worth spending time in.

Nancy Avelar
April 3, 2016
SED 322: Annotations
I believe this is true for urban kids, because I was one of them. Coming from an urban
community you want information that is relevant to your life. Even though I will be a math
teacher, I want to also include small 15 minute lessons where we talk and discuss real life
situations facing the students, so they have an opportunity to make good decisions for their lives.