Why don't we teach some pop culture? Subbing April 13-14

For the last two days I have subbed for an Orchestra teacher. The class was watching Mr. Holland’s Opus, a movie about a teacher whose dream was to write a truly great piece of music. His teaching career started in the mid 60’s and he was forced to retire in the 90’s. This is a very good movie and actually worth watching in a music class, but the students had no assignment that I was aware of while watching the movie. Considering the movie probably took 4 days of class to watch, it seems that the teacher would want to enrich this experience with an assignment, other wise the students aren’t really paying attention to what is going on. I had no behavior problems during the movie, and the students really seemed to be engrossed in the movie. There is this part in the movie where the Mr. Holland is upset, because John Lennon died. I was shocked to hear a student ask, “Who’s John Lennon?” I asked if they knew the Beatles, and most did, but there were some students that didn’t know that. I explained that John Lennon was a very important musician who was one of the four Beatles and let the movie roll on. Later there were pictures of President Reagan and President Nixon; none of the students were able to name who they were. This made me very sad. However I got to thinking that we need to teach more pop culture. Kelly Gallagher states that students need context for what they are reading. Without knowing who a person is how can they read about them and understand what they read? We can do this in association with novels and history. This might get the students more interested in the times surrounding important historical events, and literature they are reading in the classroom. We could have inquiry assignments that the students lead, then they can connect them to what we are reading in class. They could interview their family members or neighbors to see how they saw the time period. I think it would be fun, and educational.