| The purpose of this study was to examine how African American students attending a suburban high school develop critical cultural consciousness through the use of self-created poetry as pedagogy. The participants selected for the study were nine African American young men who attended Wetlands High School. Their grades ranged from freshman to senior. They were between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. Several of them played sports at Wetlands High School. Two of the participants were brothers. One of the participants was a young father whose son was two years old at the time of the study. Each one of the participants self identified as African American. Two of the participants identified as bi-racial. About half of them lived in the suburban community near their school while others lived in the south end of a major metropolitan city.; The research method used in this investigation was qualitative and it included participant observations, interviews, and document analysis of student poetry. The participants were observed in a leadership class designed to help them improve their academic performances for an entire academic school year. Two teachers taught the class, one of whom was the researcher. Both identified as African American males. The leadership class focused on African American history, contemporary culture and leadership. The participants read a variety of texts, critically analyzed them, and created poetic performances to them. Among the texts were A lesson before dying by Ernest Gaines, Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell, Middle Passage by Tom Feelings; and several scholarly articles and speeches by Cornel West, Geneva Gay, Ed Taylor, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The curriculum also included the work of Hip Hop artists like Chuck D from Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur, in combination with the participants' own free verse poetry and freestyle rapping. |
