It's Not About the Simpsons

So, I eat lunch with a group of my fellow teachers.   Most of them range in age from their early to late twenties.  I'm not anywhere near my twenties.  Let's just leave it at that.  Today, as we were enjoying our bologna sandwiches, Dan (a twenty something history teacher), made a reference to the movie Goodfellows.  I said I remembered watching that.  "Seriously," he said in disbelief, "you finally recognize one of our media references?"  "What do you mean?" I asked.  "Well," he explained, "you never recognize our references to the Simpsons or Family Guy or Supertroopers. I'm surprised you finally know what we are talking about."

 Well, needless to say, they seldom reference the most compelling of theatrical releases, but Dan was right.  I most often don't watch the same things as my young friends. Nor do I watch the same shows or movies as my students.  This, of course, could result in a great disconnect between us.  Instead, it just creates a challenge for me to stay abreast of the latest media in order to communicate with my students.  In essence, the gauntlet has been thrown down for me to know what's goin' on.

I heard of youtube long before I ever even considered integrating it into my daily lessons.  What, I wondered, could youtube possibly offer an English teacher who loves Chaucer and Bronte more than any modern day TV show?  The answer: a lot.  Several years ago I was once again at the threshold of teaching poetry.  A subject that often elicited sighs of contempt from my students.  I had been quite intrigued of late with slam poetry and wanted to expose my students to it. But how to do it?  There are not many books of slam poetry as it is a performance art.  So, off to youtube I went.  There I found Sarah Kay performing a remarkable rendition of "Hands" and another poet offering "Monsters in my Stomach."  The performances were stunning and offered the perfect way to introduce slam poetry to my students.

The next day my students and I watched myriad performances of slam poetry.  I watched as my students laughed heartily and sighed deeply.  I was taken aback when they suggested we watch a favorite performance yet again.  Students turned to one another and critiqued the poems they just viewed.  And I had an epiphany.  Youtube had offered me a way to not only expose my students to slam poetry, but to prepare them for the study of works from Dickenson, Browning, Shakespeare and Frost.  Not surprisingly, our study of poetry took on a different look that year.  Students were interested in what poets had to say.  They wondered what Frost might have look like if he were given the opportunity to slam "Two Roads."  They suggested we try it, and we did.  And it was magnificent.

So, yes.  I do not watch the Simpsons or Family Guy. I will never state that Supertroopers is one of the best films ever made, but I do make an effort to look at what my students are looking at, to surf the sites they surf, and to challenge myself to integrate what speaks to them into my classroom.  It's a challenge that keeps my teaching alive and allows my students to recognize that I know who they are and I care about the world that they navigate each day.  It will never make me "cool", but it will allow me to be a relevant teacher who might be worth listening to.  And I'm down with that, sister.