Interlude – Some Light in the Darkness – Student Adventures in Pandemic Podcasting

[This is part of a longer series – previous track “Intro” – next track – “Astronomy (8th Light)”]

I’ve asked students to analyze Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star for the last three years – the first time came that winter was just a couple months after that first listening (right after the 1/6 insurrection, as a matter of fact). I have this weakness as a teacher – almost anything I read, watch or listen to and like, I want that in my class.  But this time I succumbed to it. 

All my students were remote, and it was dreary. I kept asking – how can I make remote teaching actually work? How can I take advantage of this medium, god-awful as it may seem to be, rather than keep trying to do what I had done in previous years, just on the screen? Three months of looking at 24 muted no-camera Zoom boxes were all I had to show for the year thus far. I had been formulating an idea, mostly from listening to Cole Cuchna’s Dissect podcast a couple of years before. On an instinct, I tried something based on this, without a whole bunch of rubrics, guidelines for success, scoring guides, or any of that. After a conversation with my history teaching partner, more or less one day I got on my mic and said “I want you all to go into breakout rooms and make group podcasts about some albums, to celebrate Black History Month.” I picked out 5 albums I thought really spoke to the power and breadth of Black History – Beyonce’s Homecoming soundtrack, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Jamila Woods’ Legacy Legacy, Kendrick Lamar’s to Pimp a Butterfly and of course – Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star.

For me anyway (and I think for at least a few of my students), this unit was nothing short of a revelation.  For the first time in what felt like years, when I popped into breakout rooms, students were actually DOING something – and something they seemed glad to be doing.  They were listening to music and talking about it. I mean really talking about it – not filling out a worksheet or complying with a teacherly request, so much as actually conversing. Eventually, they made recordings. That first time, it took hours and hours to grade these.  Of course, it being pre-vaccine 2021, I had the time.  And I didn’t set any time limit on their recording either.  Some kids went on for 45 minutes or an hour, just about a single song.  And strangely, I was there for all of it.  Now, when I hear any of the songs on those albums, I think of what my students said.  Their thoughts and feelings are fused into my own. 

In future entries I use fake names to represent students – all of their names have been changed and details have been made anonymous. I will say that overall, this is a relatively diverse group of students, at least in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, gender and orientation. Many of the students found ways to make connections to their own identities, but in the interest of preserving their privacy, I’ve left that out. Suffice it to say they have experienced this music in interesting, individual and powerful ways.

[This is part of a longer series – previous track “Intro” – next track – “Astronomy (8th Light)”]