A week after I left my practicum school, my school advisor (SA) contacted me to tell me that she was going to find a way to incorporate Childish Gambino’s “This is America” into her (I so badly want to say ‘our’) students’ poetry unit. She created a graphic organizer for students to pick up on references Gambino makes in his video—like the importance of his dancing, the treatment of the dead body at the beginning, and the reference to Jim Crow. “This is America” is filled with references (check this article for more) and the students had to do their own research into what these references meant. They were also given the lyric sheet so that they could do a close reading of the lyrics. I returned to the school after this activity and the students were so engaged and excited to tell me about it.
Additionally, my SA incorporated Kendrick Lamar winning a Pulitzer as an example of poetry to tie pop culture into poetry to make it more accessible and engaging. She also had her class do poet bio projects and allowed students to choose canon poets (Emily Dickinson) to modern poets (Rupi Kaur) to singers (Tupac). The students had to look at how their background influences/d their writing in addition to analyzing their poems.