Giving Compass' Take:

• Teachers are tapping into Childish Gambino's "This Is America" to bring up issues of race and history. Taylor Swaak reveals how different teachers are taking the cultural moment and making it into a teaching opportunity. 

• How can pop culture be effectively incorporated into classroom discussions? How can philanthropy support creative, culturally relevant curricula? 

• Learn why it is important to meet students on their own cultural turf.

“This Is America” and accompanying video, headlined by Donald Glover’s alter ego Childish Gambino, has blown up — not for its melding of choral and trap music beats, but for the elusive and provocative ways it alludes to America’s tangled history with race and gun violence. Among the viral video’s more than 130 million viewers are scores of teachers, who are using it to engage students in conversations on history, symbolism, and the power of self-expression.

Nathan Tanner, who teaches history at Northwest Middle School in Salt Lake City, Utah, gleaned inspiration and ideas from a #HipHopEd teacher forum on Twitter, and crafted a 50-minute lesson plan that began with placing five stanzas from the song without context on posters around class, and asking students to speculate about the lyrics’ meaning.

Tanner highlighted a few symbols that stood out, such as Glover’s gray pants, a possible reference to attire worn by Confederate soldiers. Students took the reins from there.

Kenny Shirley, 14, zeroed in on how the guns Glover wields — one an AK-47, commonly used in mass shootings — are delicately handed off and placed in a cloth after each murder, while the victims’ bodies are left on the ground or dragged away.

“They gave more care to the gun than they did to the victim, which I thought was very interesting,” Shirley said. “And my teacher didn’t point that out, I did. Which was pretty cool.”

The level of engagement, paired with students’ ability to draw connections to history, exceeded all expectations, he said.

Read the full article about "This Is America" by Taylor Swaak at The 74.