Recently, rapper/singer Bad Bunny released his sixth solo album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a homage to his homeland Puerto Rico. Upon first listen, it took me back to my elementary school years in a moment I’ll never forget. I went to my brother’s babysitter’s house where the babysitter and my mother were conversing over coffee. My mother (in Spanish) asked how my day was and I said, “Hey mom! You know what I learned today? A song!” She said, “OK, sing it!” And I sung “¡Que bonita bandera, que bonita bandera, que bonita bandera puertorriqueña!“
It caught my mother by surprise, but in the quizzical way. After all, she was Dominican and here comes her Dominican/Haitian son singing a Boricua anthem.
Thankfully, the moment came and went, and the Dominican/Puerto Rican rivalry feels childish in the midst of American fascism. But I never forgot that moment over the years. By the time I learned the anthem, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was a well-established Puerto Rican neighborhood. My principal Mr. Barrientos and some of our school’s staff members including the arts teacher who taught me were Boricuas. While most of the teaching staff may have identified as white and/or Jewish, the surrounding neighborhood no longer was. The influx of Boricua immigrants through the 20th century made it safer for other marginalized groups, including Dominicans, to establish families here. Many of us pronounced The Lower East Side “Loisaida,” and we credit Nuyoricans for that, too.
Puerto Ricans didn’t insist that others drop their norms in service of theirs. That’s the American way. They simply ask us to understand their culture as vital to their existence akin to our own equation.
People often want to separate the processes of teaching and learning from the culture of teaching and learning. They think teaching and learning should be apolitical, acultural, and devoid of anything related to identity, especially if it’s an identity people in power don’t like. Yet, how do you separate culture from teaching and learning? The process of teaching and learning requires receiving signals from all over the world. We interpret signals through those values and communicate these signals to receivers whose lived experiences differs from the deliverer.
This becomes even more important when the lessons center narratives not borne from the story empires tell themselves.
As I listened to Ocasio’s album, I thought about the signals I might have missed if not for my formative cultural learning. Bad Bunny pulls in Nuyorican history and those in its orbit from Track 1, NUEVAYoL. The folks who taught me probably supported PR decolonization efforts, a major plank for the NY Young Lords given the subversive nature of “Que Bonita Bandera.“ It wasn’t just learning about Boricua culture, either. I often credit The Boys Club of New York (Milliken) for having us watch Eyes on the Prize. I wouldn’t have understood the role of the Civil Rights Movement in the world we aspire to without it. My sixth grade teacher took us to synagogue once, which also opened the door for me to visit a mosque in college. I set aside my ingrained Catholicism for a truly universal drive to the ways millions understood religion and spirituality.
But this, too, was culture. Teachers helped me appreciate the world through those cultural experiences, which connected me with so many others.
A plethora of well known frameworks embody how we think about teaching with culture in mind. From multicultural classroom to culturally responsive teaching and beyond, we have yet to see a full reckoning with the depth of these concepts across the profession. In fact, only about a quarter of teachers (to be generous) probably use them in their funds of knowledge. Many have said how difficult it is to create culturally responsive curriculum, even with readily available scorecards. Few have noted that every curriculum is culturally responsive, but it depends on which culture we’re talking about. Culturally responsive teaching, culturally sustaining pedagogy, or even Cultivating Genius frameworks point to a different way of doing things.
Instead of trying to funnel everyone towards a narrow, white-centric, conservative American culture, these frameworks aspire towards a culture that embraces difference towards a shared humanity.
Bad Bunny highlights the diversity of sounds generated from his motherland as well. His seamless juggling of Boricua genres like salsa, bomba, plena, and reggaeton creates the foundation for explorations of a wide array of themes. Bad Bunny’s chants for a liberated, decolonized Borikén take center stage as a call back to Un Verano Sin Ti. (It’s also a move away from his reflections of his stardom in Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana.) Many of us from Caribbean islands understand the multiple influences that generated our cultural identities.
On the other hand, aspirations towards monoethnic states create get us further away from the respect and dignity humans individually and collectively deserve.
In this way, the concept of teaching and learning through culture means everyone has the opportunity to do both teaching and learning. We learn to dance and, in time, we teach. We learn to eat and make the foods and that gets passed on, hopefully, too. Bad Bunny excels in giving a window into his island without giving everyone ownership of those materials. In other words, we get to bring our whole selves to the space he invites without us pretending that we’re suddenly Puerto Rican.
After all, many of us have our own rhythms to teach and learn with. And we should.
Jose, who probably listened to the latest Bad Bunny offering 20 times over …