Critical Pedaagogy in an Urban high School English Classroom

Within the first few paragraphs, you can see Paulo Frier'es influence on the Critical Pedagogy in this chapter. My favorite part of this text is how the teachers chose to deal with the problem that most teachers at multicultural schools face and that is how to balance the canonical literature that they are required to teach with the multicultural writing that the students want to read. I like that the teacher used a combination of canon text like Beowulf, Othello, and the like and they blended it with the use of hip-hop, and popular films to keep students interested. I like how the teachers also placed a premium on the vocabulary and writing that students would need to be able to do successfully on SAT's and ACTs. The teachers even put a premium on the student's use of language in order for them to be able to present themselves in a compelling way across multiple writing platforms as well as in both formal and informal presentations. Overall, the teachers in this chapter seem to gravitate towards Freire's method of free flow of information between student and teacher rather than the banking method that is traditionally used in the modern education system.