My MVP this week comes from “We Real Cool”: Toward a Theory of Black Masculine Literacies, by David E. Kirkland. The passage that really stuck out for me was: “These scholars have argued that, for the most part, black males’ lives are compromised deeply by the pursuit of coolness, as coolness corresponds with negative behaviors that impair their ability to succeed academically.” While this isn’t the focus of the article, it struck a chord with me because, unfortunately, it is often true. Of course much depends on how you define “cool”, which I think, and hope, has changed since I was an adolescent. I know that my personal choice to be “cool”  affected me academically and in many other ways and has had a big impact on my life. I really liked the article a lot, but I wish it got more into how the cool people could be reached in an academic setting because it can be very challenging to reach many of them since they tend to reject and suspect those outside of their social circles, particularly adults that they see as conformists. I know that at the end of middle school and my first two years of high school, I didn’t trust many, if any, of my teachers and wasn’t really interested in what they were trying to teach me; as a result, I missed out on a lot. As a teacher, I really don’t want to see this happen to others. It would be nice if what was considered cool, could be redefined, as I’m hopeful it has for many.