Dessa: Time to Bury the Dead White Male

by Heather M. F. Lyke

• Just as one book is often turned into a miniseries on Netflix or Hulu, we give you this miniseries of articles inspired by Dessa. We hope you find it binge-worthy. 
• Quotes from outside of the Third Eye Education core team were collected via a survey released on Twitter in February of 2021. 

• Also, consider listening to Third Eye Education's podcast with Dessa (releases on March 2, 2021) and Dessa's podcast, Deeply Human (launches on March 8, 2021).

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I have been using "The Bullpen" with students for years. The lyrics--rich with metaphor, idioms, allusions, and internal rhyme—are calling out for scansion and line-by-line analysis. Students dig in: sucked in by a celebrity name, feminist themes, and the explative in line 10. They often don’t even realize they are annotating poetry until I point it out—until I also toss in a poem by a dead, white, male in quick succession. 

Most teachers realize that novelty increases student engagement, but it also improves memory retention of newly learned concepts. A 2020 study, published by Frontiers in Psychology, noted that when new learning is paired with a novel approach, the memory retention of that new concept is enhanced by up to 65%. For many students, rap in the classroom is a definite novelty, and with Dessa’s works interweaving a myriad of content areas—from the U.S. economy to psychology, from slaughtering a cow to falling out of love—her works can be used as a novelty across the board.

Jason Koets, a music teacher from Delano, Minnesota noted that, “It's inspiring to me as an educator to see students become interested in things they don't normally notice because they heard it in a song.” 

Related reading: "Confidence, Pubs, and Finding a Place"

​In addition to novelty, real-world connections engage students. “It is important to draw connections to things outside of the curriculum and to make those connections relatable,” said Scott Lyke, a social studies teacher from Rochester, Minnesota. “That is one of the key ways song lyrics, poetry, and writing pull the consumer in--by presenting a situation in which [the consumer of the art] can see themselves.”

image from www.dessawander.com

Of course, “music brings emotion, power, and audience to abstract, intellectual, and unapproachable topics. It's inviting and inspiring...” noted Heather Zierhut, a science professor at the University of Minnesota. And creating a tangible route to often intangible concepts is a welcome tool for any classroom teacher. 

Why rely on the same old, same old? Perhaps Dessa captures it best in  “The Bullpen” when she says, “I refuse to downplay my intelligence / in a room of thugs and rap veterans.” Why should educators downplay the intelligence found in contemporary examples? Surely, it’s not because we’d rather fill the room with only dead, white men.

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Classroom Application Suggestions

Social Studies: 

• Pair Dessa’s “Fire Drills” with historical protest music, such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Mississippi Goddamn.” [ idea from Anonymous, 9-12 teacher, Massachusetts ]
• Use “'Who's Yellen Now?” as a lead into an economics lesson.  [ idea from Scott Lyke, 9-12 teacher, Minnesota ]
• Use songs like “The Bullpen,” “Dutch,” or “Fire Drills” to touch on gender inequality. [ idea from Anonymous, 9-12 teacher, Massachusetts;  & Anonymous, 6-8 teacher, Minnesota ]

Music:

• Use “Dixon's Girl” to demonstrate that clarinet players don't need to be limited to Mozart in an orchestral setting [ idea from Jason Koets, 6-12 teacher, Minnesota ]
• Share with students excerpts from My Own Devices, such as the chapters “Glossary” or “Breaking Even,” to illustrate what life on the road as a musician is really like.  [ idea from Heather Lyke, K-12 Teaching & Learning Specialist, Minnesota ]
• Explore how Dessa rearranges her music to work with different ensembles, from Doomtree to the Minnesota Orchestra. For instance, “Skeleton Key” has many versions: the original version from the Parts of Speech album, the choral version with Vocal Essence, and the lockdown edition with the Minnesota Orchestra [ idea from Jason Koets, 6-12 teacher, Minnesota ]

English:

• Use songs, such as  “Children's Work” and “Dixon's Girl” as an example of storytelling--showcasing the fact that the reader must make assumptions and understand the play on language to fully know the story (plus, they lead to a discussion on idioms) [ idea from Misa Gonzales, 6-12 teacher, Arizona ]
• Explore songs, such as “Fighting Fish” and “Rome” when teaching rhetorical criticism course. With both, students can analyze the work historically, culturally, textually, and visually (in case of videos), and then apply various rhetorical lenses to make arguments a wealth of arguments [ idea from Heather Ashley Hayes, college professor, Oregon ]
• Have students do poetic annotations of songs like “Matches to Paper Dolls,” “Fire Drills,” and “5 out of 6,” as they are full of metaphor, varying rhyme types, and caesura, etc. [ idea from Diana Weber, 9-12 teacher, New York;  & Callianne Olson, 9-12 teacher, Minnesota ]

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics):

• Utilize the chapter “Call Off Your Ghost” in My Own Devices as an introduction to genetics, or even to the scientific method as a whole. [ idea from Heather Zierhut, college professor, Minnesota ]
• ​Use songs like “Into the Spin” and “Velodrome” to drive home a few of the real-world applications of physics, specifically gravity and centripetal force. [ idea from Matt Drucker, 9-12 teacher, Minnesota ]
• Have students analyze the chapter “Breaking Even” from My Own Devices with calculus students.  [ idea from Anonymous, 9-12 teacher, Texas ]

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Dig deeper: read the other articles in the Dessa series.

• Inspiration for Transdisciplinarity Innovation and Application
• A Canvas for Challenging Conversations
• Deeply Human​

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On Becoming Deeply Human
with Dessa | 3.2.2021
Dessa speaks with the Third Eye team about curiosity, metacognition, and the pursuit of authentic diversity.

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Heather M. F. Lyke is the Teaching & Learning Specialist for Dover-Eyota Schools and author of numerous articles focusing on quality education. ​

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