Professormom goes back to school

School started last week—the week started with a full day of meetings on Monday (from 8:30-4:30) and classes started on Wednesday.

I am teaching a graduate seminar I haven’t taught since 2011. It’s popular culture and pedagogy and it’s a hybrid course which means we meet face to face some weeks and online the other weeks. I have my students create online learning experiences for each other based on the week’s readings. I can’t tell you how excited the video game group is . . .

A lot has changed since 2011 in regards to this topic. I don’t remember there being so many educational apps for phones or the role ipads now play in classrooms. Tony Danza’s reality television show in which he teaches high school English aired, as well as the film Bad Teacher. It’s going to be a learning experience for me as well.

Popular culture and pedagogy certainly isn’t always the best combination and we usually spend much of the semester problematizing the two terms that make up the course’s titles. On the first night, I ask my students to pair up with someone they don’t know and to go around on campus and take pictures of pedagogy and popular culture. For one of their last assignments, I will ask them to take a picture that contains both and tie that representation into the course’s readings and discussion. The picture at the top of this post is one of the pictures of pedagogy.

 Speaking of popular culture and pedagogy and that photo, I just read Mickey Rapkin’s Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory.  It is a great read and I love thinking about how this nonfiction book inspired the movie. (the picture at the top of this post is actually one of the settings from the film). But the neatest part was watching archival footage of the group’s on Youtube and seeing how the film really captured the world that is Collegiate A Cappella.