Educators Liked Me
How a New Generation of Educators is Revolutionizing Learning Through Cultural Connection and Innovation
read time | 2 minutes
who | Gogo Isolezwe (they/them) sangoma, gender anarchist and pawerent queering life
Can I have two minutes of your time? OK, look around everybody on mute!
Now that we have your attention, if you have scrolled through any social media, through a carefully curated for you page, you will likely see an array of educators changing the feel of education one Gen Z cultural reference at a time. Scrolling through personal memories of time, my favourite teachers were those who centred ‘play’ in teaching. My extra math lessons on weekends were riddled with raps on algebra and collective choir through the tricks of trigonometry, one that has remained consistent is educators like me often waded through the confines of the curriculum with suave.
Others regrettably couldn’t resist that racist urge and we’d find ourselves caught up in bangers like “don't talk that insert random clicks here” and “this is not a shebeen or taxi rank” when we’d speak in our native tongue to sometimes relay concepts in dialects for collective (black) understanding or simply share inside jokes.
The age of teachers as cultural workers is on the rise and personally, I love to see it. The joy fostered in understanding that children aren't just extensions of your pay grade truly cultivates engagement and embraces the fluidity of understanding. This evolving methodology of incorporating students as collaborators encourages curiosity and safety. Ah, imagine a society with educators who are not only aware of their bigotry but engage with pop culture as a source of literary text making understanding within reach and not frozen in time to Shakespearean understanding.
Play supports the holistic development of children, encompassing cognitive, social, emotional, and physical as interconnected spheres of existence. It provides opportunities for children to explore, experiment, and learn comprehensively. It's undeniable how much the internet interweaves and orbits in our adult and child lives, therefore it is undeniable the impact culture has on learning, being and belonging. A writer on the advancement of 4IR, Schwab (2017) argues that digitisation and technological advancements are to revolutionise everything, offering a different way of living, morphing reality and the digital realm, thus making digital and biological challenges indistinguishable. According to them, the 4IR’s difference compared to past revolutions is the perceived harmonisation and integration of a plethora of disciplines and rolling discoveries. Applied in the socio-political and economic locus, the actualisation of the 4IR gives legitimacy to inter/transdisciplinary approaches and thus new ways of engaging significant issues affecting our communities.
Sometimes being radical is being honest about the impact of deepening our understanding of understanding. This is but one way to redress structural marginalisation and improve access.
Questions to ponder:
In what ways does a pop culture approach foster creativity and innovation in teaching?
How can teachers stay updated on current trends in pop culture to keep their teaching content relevant?
Do you think this approach helps bridge the gap between academic content and students' everyday lives?
