But towards the middle of the decade we started to learn about the detriments of secondhand smoking. My age would correspond with the stage of schooling when students were introduced to the dangers of cigarettes and alcohol. But secondhand smoking was a new thing. Through science, the narrative around secondhand smoking wafted from arbitrary to objective. My sixth grade classroom learned how bad it was simply to be around people when they were smoking cigarettes. By the time I entered eighth grade, my parents no longer had the option of telling the hostess which section they would like to be seated in. Smoking sections in public places like restaurants had vanished.

There is no question that education has an impact on culture. Like any institution, its outturn is able to lean upon and dent society. The question that requires a deeper mediation is whether or not education can change culture and society. 

Because culture and society cyclically inform each other, Education becomes the conduit for learning about both. School, then, is the site we individual members of a culture learn, both implicitly and explicitly, about the very culture they exist in. 

We should be asking ourselves, What is the purpose of education? Is its most essential aim to promote happiness? Or ought a child’s learning be absolutely tethered to their experience and the practical applications that evolve in between the continuum of survival and thriving? Regardless of which aim we lean towards, one thing is for sure: Education, in part, is a preparation for something. 

Ultimately, educators must teach citizens to be aware. Aware of their experience, of history, of reality, of what knowledge is objective and what is subjective. One purpose of education is to foster, within its students, an awareness of the culture and society they live in. Then, when we understand the elements that are most important to education we can insist that, at its core, a vital aim of it is to foster a capacity to prepare for and seek out a just culture. That is how education was utilized to make smoking indoors taboo. Because the purpose of education is inextricably tied to freedom, education can not only change culture, it is responsible for changing culture. The question remains: Is it doing a good job? 

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We can derive from this then that the students who feel most out of place in a school setting are our most vulnerable students. So the question then becomes, how do we make our most “vulnerable students” feel comfortable in a setting that is ultimately intended to benefit them at all cost? Well, I am no expert but you can say that my “advice” (I use that term very loosely) is derived from my experience in the classroom, both as student and teacher. To give it an “academic-ish” ring, it is practice-based theory, and not the other way around.

Arguably, the most salient strategy involving making students feel at home at school comes from the trope of what it means to be inclusive. Including the culture of your students into their academics creates engagement. (I’ve written about this before…somewhere…but at this point, between my blogs, my Thesis, and my courses, the particular location of where I elaborated on this topic is a fuzzy blur to me). Brief example number one: at the beginning of the year, I “let” my students re-create the classroom. The parameters were loosely defined (No, kids, we cannot have a PS4 station for chillaxing when you’re finished all your work). My students, of course, came up with some fundamental symbols of the post-modern traditional classroom: a math wall, a student work wall, and a reading corner were all things we included. But students also came up with new and innovative aspects of the classroom that expressed important elements of their culture: we now have a Twitter Wall, and an IG wall. It is not too hard to take “their culture” and gently mold it into “school culture”. Our IG wall has only one caveat; the pictures posted (with our Polaroid Snap camera – hopefully they don’t break it before Christmas!), must demonstrate student learning. So, our wall consists of students doing school shit – working in groups on activities, photos of completed projects and work, all that type of stuff. Voila, I now have a “Student Documentation Board” in my classroom. Cutting edge pedagogical stuff, isn’t it? Only difference, it has a cool name. Our Twitter Wall is where students park a thought, experience, or insight they gained throughout the course of the week. We “tweet” on Fridays before the day ends. I am hoping that some of our tweets align with some of our photos. But if they don’t, they are both valuable to me and to my students. My students are still learning how to be self-reflexive of, and in, their learning.

Above all, both these examples situate ways teachers can include student culture into the classroom. Other examples include being cognizant of the type of posters you put up. In my class, our “reading wall,” or our “Get Lit (erature)!” board includes, not quotes from Shakespeare and other famous old, white dead people, but instead, rappers. Long story short, kids know these figures, think they are cool, and subsequently think reading is cool, since these quotes are situated in the reading corner (well, that is my elevator-pitch version of the philosophy behind it anyways). This is turning into a long blog; I didn’t even get to touch on how to actually infuse elements of particular cultures into curriculum and teaching strategies. For the sake of not boring you, I think I’ll stop there for now. Making students feel at home at school is an intricate and provocative topic. And that is why every teacher should be mindful of their practice in this regard. It is easy to leave students out even when we are still trying to do the best job we can do in the classroom.

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We can no longer discredit the importance of culture and identity as it pertains to the perceptions that urban Black males feel they need to occupy. As well, we cannot silence the truth that school incorrectly views this type of identity performance as deviant. Hip-hop culture is not deviant culture; the contemporary perception of it boxes it in as such. But in truth, hip-hop culture is the result of, “selective appropriation, incorporation, and rearticulating of European ideologies, cultures, and institutions, alongside African heritage,” which led to, “linguistic innovations in rhetorical stylization of the body, forms of occupying an alien space, heightened expressions, hairstyles, ways of walking, standing, and talking, and a means of constituting and sustaining camaraderie and community” (Hall, 1992). Incredible stuff. But not viewed as such. So what do we truly expect from our urban Black males when we ask them to navigate a space like education while they are also subjectified to the discourse that sees hip-hop culture and it’s aesthetic representations as abhorrent and anti-intellectual?

Until we root these types of questions into the forefront, urban Black males can learn the “superficial features” of dominant discourses, as well as the more subtle aspects, and if placed in proper context, can acquire these traits without feeling that they are “bowing before the master”. Taking an understanding that identity is fluid and that one needs not to hide his textbooks in a pizza box for sake of disaffiliation with his peers must be a central point of conversation if we want to reverse the detrimental discourse that surrounds Black masculinity, hip-hop aesthetics, and identity that urban Black males experience and navigate through while in high school.

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Clearly, there are more questions about situated and contextual knowledge than answers. The hustler playing three-card monte on 6^th Ave. may not have the same credentials, or letters behind his name as I do, but in that situation he certainly was my intellectual equal. This leads us to the question of validated knowledge. What knowledge becomes validated through discourse and what knowledge finds itself slotted way down the intellectual pole of hierarchy?

I don’t want to assume anything about my man’s life situation and how he ended up hustling tourists on a random corner of downtown Manhattan. But because I have had conversations with many students who have Masters and Doctorates, I can assume that, given the “right” opportunities, this dude could have easily taken a seat beside me in any course on Anti-Racism Education and spoken a narrative that was true, poignant, and insightful. Perhaps he would rather be out there “with the people” and making his ends meet by tricking people into a false sense of confidence. But I would wager this: this dude was probably never afforded the opportunity to see the path of higher education as an option.

These hustlers are clearly successful in their vein of employment. Like drug dealers and other criminal forms of occupation, I am agitated with questions regarding why some would choose this over conventional forms of making an honest living. And trust me, the aspect of illicit activity for a means of a living hits home closer than you think (Perhaps…no, never a blog, you’ll have to wait for the book!). The rationale for one to choose this life path over more “safer” options perplexes me. Because I don’t have the answer, despite reading numerous insights on criminology, I am left standing at a corner, still swayed into thinking that I am smarter than this dude facilitating a card game. I guess the only question that we can really answer in education is: How do we get to these brilliant men before they choose a life of the street?

One solution is for education to provide opportunities that validate differentiated knowledges. Hustlers are no dummies, so they couldn’t have been dummies in school. However, they were probably meant to feel that their brand of intellect, or street smarts, would never be valued in the space of a school.

So they left.

What if we were to somehow validate these forms of non-conventional knowledge so that these young men could see themselves in a promising light? Discourse makes it seem as though these black men abandon school. But by a simple observation of the hustler’s intellectual competence, it clearly seems that school, in some form or fashion, abandoned him. His fuck it moment didn’t come from him thinking that he wasn’t smart enough to “do school”. His moment of departure came from school’s insistence that he didn’t fit in with the program. It always takes two to tango.

But in this dance of inequity and injustice, the impetus is on education to take the lead, not the student. We can no longer afford to lose our money to three-card monte pros simply because school crabbed out on them long time ago…

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How a teacher is supposed to look is the bigger question here. And more importantly, who gets to decide what the “norm” is? If you feel comfortable wearing a dress shirt and tie when you go out there and teach, by all means go right ahead. But there is also nothing wrong with wearing a pair of jeans and some Air Jordan’s to work in my opinion either. Remember, the things you teach students are not solely derived from the curriculum you deliver. Your presence in the classroom, and the way you dress also serves as a learning lesson to your students.

Teaching requires an understanding that the school is a microcosm of the real world. And eventually your students are going to graduate and base their decisions (in terms of careers, etc.) off of what they explicitly and implicitly learned from the schools they went to. When a teacher walks into a classroom wearing a t-shirt and jeans, they are re-establishing our current notions of professionalism. In many urban areas, part of the reason why there is such a disconnect between students and teachers is due to the perceptual difference. Students sometimes disengage with schooling because the teachers they are learning from sound and look nothing like them. I am not suggesting that all teachers go out and dress like teenagers. Far from it. I am saying, be comfortable with what you wear to school because “dressing the part” also ties into a systemic realism created from those in privileged positions.

A teacher’s goal is to open possibilities for students. Part of an opening of possibility can be created when teachers break down the current and limited views of success and “professionalism”. Validating voices, appearances, and bodies that have been on the margins by society will be more easily achieved when we open up the idea of professional attire and trouble our current stereotypes. There are certainly things that a teacher should never wear to work (belly tops, ripped jeans, etc.). But there is no definite model that all teachers should adhere to. So when you tell a new teacher to dress the part, be mindful of what you are insinuating and what you are saying about particular cultures.

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