Message from a Hip Hop Educator

First things first, Rest in Peace Uncle Phil! If You Know You Know (IYKYK). Yes, I am a Hip Hop Educator, but I want to be clear, I do not teach students how to rap or make beats. Nor I am highlighting the literary devices in lyrics. I really pride myself in destigmatizing Hip Hop Culture for Educational consumption and there are a myriad number of ways that the genre can be and has already been incorporated into the Educational field. I want to enlighten my fellow Educators on how I use Hip Hop to bring value to booth students and staff.?

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

SEL as defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel, and show empathy for others, establish, and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. When I look at that definition, I think about the less often talked about 5th Element of Hip Hop. The four original elements are: the DJ, the MC, Breakdancing, and Graffiti, but that 5th Element is Knowledge of Self! Knowledge of Self certainly requires an individual to know and understand their identities, be able to understand the emotions happening inside of them and properly regulate those emotions, have an ability to create and maintain healthy relationships because we live in an interdependent world, and successfully navigate all of this to do well in school and their personal lives. I often say Hip Hop is SEL and this is what I mean especially with two of the CASEL 5 Competencies being Self-Awareness and Self-Management which are synonymous with Knowledge of Self! You can take lyrics and connect them to one or more of the CASEL 5 Competencies. I will use J. Cole in this example since I referenced him in the opening line of this think piece. In the song “Crooked Smile” J. Cole raps “I keep my twisted grill just to show the kids it’s real” with the goal of letting people know that physical beauty is not the only thing that matters and that real strengths are those defined by your character, innate abilities, and Self-Love. I connect that lyric to the competency of Self-Awareness by Recognizing Strengths and engage students in an activity to create a personal affirmation for themselves. I also have their peers respond, “That looks like GREATNESS to Me!” after the affirmation to build community. Did I use Hip Hop to boost SEL? Yes, but did I do it without any profanity or negativity, once again YES! There are so many lyrics that can be pulled from songs to boosts up SEL skills!?

Professional Development

One of my duties in my role in my school district is to support administrators and teachers build positive school climate and culture. In my latest professional development session, I relied on Hip Hop like I usually do! There is a Hip Hop Producer and DJ named the Alchemist, not to be confused with the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. At the end of one of his songs on the album 1st Infantry the interlude states, “A Professor Alchemist has discovered a way to transform ordinary metals into gold” The way I utilized that line to empower the staff of that school was impactful. I spoke about the way teachers complain about the behaviors of certain students and how we find every way to place blame on the neighborhood, social media, and especially the parents. I informed them that parents are sending the best versions of their students to us at this time… emphasis on the current time in history. I brought up the line by The Alchemist and explained as Educators we are tasked with taking the “ordinary metals” which could be a student not on grade level, a student with perceived behavior issues, etc. and turn them into GOLD because of us being their teacher! At the end of the session, I asked those teachers, what one thing can they commit to doing differently this school year and many voiced that they are willing to accept the challenge of being an Alchemist, of turning their students into GOLD! I know all too well the stigma of Hip Hop Culture. This is another way that Hip Hop has allowed me to add value in Educational spaces and as you just saw it doesn’t just effect students!

Writing Papers

To both my fellow educators and students, even if you do not claim to be a fan of Hip Hop you have used a major concept of the culture which is sampling. Sampling in Hip Hop is when you take a piece of an original song whether it is lyrics, the bassline, piano keys, the drums, or any piece of an original composition to create a new song. One of my favorite examples of sampling comes from the Alchemist when he sampled a break in the song “My Music” by Samuel Jonathan Johnson which came out in 1978 to create his Hip Hop classic “We Gonna Make It” by Jadakiss and Styles P. What makes this sample special in my opinion is that this break does not show up until 3 minutes and 23 seconds into a song that’s nearly 5 minutes and 30 seconds long! Once again IYKYK, that iconic beat and opening line by Jadakiss are legendary. In the music industry you must ask permission and pay a royalty to sample another artist and if you don’t it can lead to legal issues. When we sample in Education, it is a little different. I think we all are familiar with the American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA) styles of citing sources in our papers. In Education, while we will not face legal battles when we don’t give credit to the authors of the works that we are using in our papers we could be accused of plagiarizing because it is not our original thought. Which can result in an honor code violation or a failing grade. Therefore, citing a source in a paper is a form of sampling and sampling is very much a part of Hip Hop Culture!

To all my fellow Educators, not only can Hip Hop be used to improve SEL skills, challenge teachers during a professional development session, and has been widely used through the process of citing it really can add immense value in other ways if you are able to look at the genre as more than just the stereotypes. This approach is most impactful when you are dealing with students/communities whose culture is Hip Hop. Everything that I've outlined are ways to be more culturally responsive in our practices. I must emphasize that I am not using Hip Hop Culture to give a lesser version of the concepts I spoke about but I’m bringing an innovative way to bring them to life. The goal of this piece was not to create a new fan of Hip Hop, but I surely hope that your perspective has been changed about how powerful it can be in Education.