A New Hope

There is an advantage to being culturally literate as an educator. Being able to connect something the students know with a concept they don't yet know can make it easier for them to wrap their brains around. For example, the diffraction of light can be easier to understand if you can tell students that their classmate's Pink Floyd T-shirt demonstrates the concept:

I know this, because I used this very example in class one day.

I find it gratifying to know that the rising generation isn't all about gangsta rap and Bratz dolls. On Monday, for example, I noticed that one of my 7th period students had on the aforementioned Floyd T-shirt. A brief conversation revealed that everyone at that table knew and liked Pink Floyd, and one of them even had "Dark Side of the Moon" on his i-pod. Pretty soon, the whole class was talking about it. Pretty cool.

I'm also reminded of a circumstance where my middle school class was watching the daily ChannelOne broadcast, and there was a feature on the Beatles. One of the 7th-grade girls in the class said, "I love the Beatles! Paul McCartney was such a hottie when he was young!"

There is hope for the future, my friends.