Reflections and 3 Reading Responses to Week 4 of Hip Hop Pedagogy Class at Mills

I humbly post these reflections as I am jumping into my own understanding of Crit. Theory and CHHP (Crit. Hip Hop Theory)

Response Paper #1 to KRS ONE and CHHP

By Sunny Dawn EDUC 440

Descriptive Phase: KRS ONE speaking at Temple University and Akon’s paper together really highlight the need for real education in the classroom.  KRS ONE has a deep history in hip hop and talks about his real experience.  Akon stayed away from his personal history and had a very academic tone that uses Friere Theory of Action as a basis for discussion.  I appreciate the various references and agreed with Akon’s paper as well as appreciate how much he references Andrade.  What keeps sticking out for me is the truth that I believe is extremely hard to work with other public education teachers who work from the deficit model versus asset model. Personal Interpretive Phase: The hardest thing for me to swallow is that the education system is so personal to me.  I see other teachers of color that I work with and they are definitely not sticking their “conscious” evolved necks out for their students.   Critical Phase: In fact they practice discipline policies that silence students in their class that have a different cultural tone than them or that doesn’t fit in the mold of academics they are trying to deliver or as Akon puts it, “School cultures and practices encourage students to believe that a meritocratic educational system exists, that students are responsible for their own failure, and that issues of racial inequality, hip hop, and social justice are not worthy of study inside or outside of schools.”Creative Transformative Phase: KRS ONE as a rapper has been a huge influence on me and to watch (both parts) of his Youtube talk at Temple reaffirms my practice.  I also participated in what Akon calls CCHP this past semester with my 5^th grade Special Education Social Studies class. Using this exact platform; “…transformative education for the poor and disempowered begins with the creation of pedagogic spaces where marginalized youth are enabled to gain consciousness of how their own experiences have been shaped by larger social institutions.”  The only reason  I was comfortable enough to do this curriculum where we the curriculum was based on how imperialism impacted us as African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans was because I did not have to worry about them being tested.  In fact it’s the only subject 5^th graders do not get tested on and my 5^th grade General Education teachers  as well as the principal could care less what the Special Education students are learning about.

Response Paper #2 to What is Pedagogy?

By Sunny Dawn EDUC 440

Descriptive Phase/Personal Interpretive Phase: “Discourse” (a way of life) as summed up in the first sentence of Au’s piece is the best word for summing all 3 articles in this week’s reading and thinking about CHHP.  I remembered when I was an R.A. for the dorms at Chico State, I put this in the bathroom all year long.  “Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads to the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both,” Freire. (p.26)  This was one of so many subtle movements I was a part of in my twenties when hip hop started to first effect how interact with the world (the beginning of my punk rock/hip hop/electronic meets politics when I was 24, a wee 13 years ago.

Critical Phase: Bell Hooks writing always seems to hit me in the core of my body.  I actually avoid her now days because I can barely hear her break it down and feel the deepness of my own life too. For example, I will not watch that Precious movie, but I know reading PUSH changed my life.  I can relate to Au’s motivation for writing an article that felt pretty self explanatory and yet his acknowledgment that acadamia are not people of color I found a bit offensive, For example, Au states“….safe to assume that students do not regularly read critical theorists and academic journals…” I found the statement an unnecessary opinion in his purpose for writing the article.

Creative Transformative Phase: The readings translates very easy to my practice with particular points from Hooks.  I related to her journey as student and as teacher, although she is a professor and I am in K-5 education. Words or phrases form this text stick out in my mind as an educator, “confine each pupil”; “active participant, non a passive consumer”; “teachers must be committed to a process of self-actualization”; “professors who claimed to follow Freire’s model even as their pedagogical practices were mired in structures of domination”.  As I move forward it is hard for me to educate colleagues to their blindness regarding students and what they bring to the classroom, I guess I am still looking for the right district or school that would support the mind, body, & soul.

Response Paper #3 to Critical Perspectives By Sunny Dawn              EDUC 440            June 11, 2013: Descriptive/Personal Int. Phase: What sticks for me in this week’s readings out is the constant referral (in the CHHP blog) Andrade’s perspectives in the dialogue of Critical Perspectives. Andrade’s  work shows the importance of laying out the “counter narrative” as well empirically documenting the “Quasi-Darwinian belief system” that has been legitimizing our failing urban school systems.  While at New College in 2007 I had a chance to hear Andrade speak as the Key Note of the T4SJ Conf. as well as in my teacher credential program.  I can’t lie and say his words and philosophy didn’t impact my career.  So much so that I had my daughter be a part of the “low income urban” school I was teaching at, just to be fully a part of the movement of change in the urban school or a “ryder”.  However I digress because coming full circle I agree with Andrade that teachers who are making the conscious choice of being a part of this counter narrative pedagogy need more support.  As Andrade states, “…more attention must be paid to the type of training, development, and support that are given to urban teachers and school leaders.” (p.9) Critical Phase: “Misconceptions” of “gangsta rap” I have to disagree with, “violent lyrics are not intended to be taken literally, but rather should be seen as metaphorically boasting and as artistic challenges to competitors on the microphone”(Kelley, 1996, p. 189). I think at one point I agreed that the violent language and overtones were metaphorical and at one time totally resonated and needed to hear “that bitches” were not going to triumph over me. However I believe my own evolution within Hip Hop has changed with age.  Rappers in the Bay seem to speak louder to a spiritual oppression that I feel deeper than the actual physical/cognitive one experienced in academia or the work force that some “gangsta” rap speak of. Transformative Phase: What has come to me through these readings is the need to really legitimize educators who are doing this work.  I need my leadership to take the “serious” tone of conscious political acts within the public sphere, more than academic research.  Although I believe in all the underground HH movements in the Bay and have a pride that Andrade is here in Oakland, a professional consistent public forum for educators, beyond T4SJ is desperately needed.  I know that my efforts will be targeting that as I move forward and my skills in leadership need to be channeled in that way for me to have a renewed commitment to public and private education.