Black Market Teaching: Fusing Art Integration and a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in an 8th Grade ELA Urban Classroom

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to examine how a white male teacher creates a culturally relevant pedagogy infuses arts integration to create an authentic learning environment for his students. This study traced student engagement, perceptions of, and performance in their English language arts class. This study concentrated on 21 Latino students and 3 black students in a middle school ELA classroom in an underperforming urban school. The questions that guided this study were, 1. How does this White male teacher integrate art within English language arts framed by the Common Core? 2. How does art integration and public display of art shape students’ perceptions of school and English language arts? 3. How does a white male teacher create a Culturally responsive pedagogy while navigating the required modules and common core standards. Data included field notes during class as well as audio, and visual recordings, interviews with the teacher and students, and student artifacts to trace the ongoing learning and teaching in the class. Findings show that giving students a platform to publish their work in a more public sphere outside of the classroom can be a crucial element in a culturally responsive pedagogy. This teacher helps his students get their ideas and questions out of the classroom into the school environment. The students embrace this more creative way of learning and thinking and it fuels their learning