GUIDING QUESTIONS:
How do Teaching Artists even get started? How do they learn how to teach? Are there professional development opportunities for them and what do they look like? Most importantly, what are the unique skills and competencies which they bring into the classroom?
What are some approaches for engaging young people in critical thinking in the classroom?
How did Beyonce show up in my first day of teaching?
Before the workshop series began, Liberty requested an overview and lesson plan. Their original vision is for the class to be a gender-specific, male-only weekly workshop series focused on the intersection of hip-hop and identity. I submit a comprehensive three-page course breakdown (see Table 1).
The overview begins, “Hip-Hop music is one of the most important artistic and cultural expressions around the world to emerge from the twentieth century.” The course is designed to use culture as an aesthetic and analytical framework while studying and creating hip-hop music. The second two pages of my workshop overview includes a session-by-session course breakdown, exploring a specific subtheme, and an artistic focus for each class (see Table 1). Originally, Liberty told me that the workshop would be gender-specific, male-only, and focused on identity, which changed weeks before our first session to include female students.
Written beneath these questions is a list I assume Farhad prompted me to generate with him of specific behaviors that can prevent young people from progressing through activities: reading out loud, not looking smart, fear of attention, math (do not have fundamentals), being called on, structure and grammar get in the way of creativity, and pressure from their teacher. This list resonates with what I witnessed and experienced in public schools and was a great reminder of the ways young people struggle in traditional classroom environments. As a first-time educator, I greatly appreciated how intentional Liberty’s program director was in ensuring I understood the needs of their students so I could develop my lessons to reach those who struggled the most.
Table 1
Curriculum Focus for Liberty Course
In addition to providing me with context for understanding specific indicators for when students struggle, Farhad continued his dialogical crash course with practical advice to facilitate student engagement, including reducing complexity; allowing other modalities (singing, making sounds, dancing); changing the pace; providing students with cues; breaking up into smaller groups; giving students options; providing examples; building on successes; and meeting students where they are. We also discussed ideas for opening the class, including posing conversation-starters like, “What is in your CD?” and “Who is your favorite emcee?”
To close our session, Farhad finally reviewed some new teacher best practices: create managed and controlled opportunities, give students options, and provide several samples. Our lesson concluded with a mantra, “Students who are progressing think strategically. Students who learn usually have teachers who teach strategically.”
After this interactive seminar-style warm-up, Farhad invites me to use the S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Planning Questions planning process to prepare me to teach my course: (a) shape the critical question, (b) map the critical content, (c) analyze difficulties, (d) reach enhancement decisions, (e) teach strategically, (f) evaluate mastery, and (g) revisit outcomes. Educators love acronyms, don’t we? My hip-hop educator toolkit begins.
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DISCUSSION QUESTION: Is this curriculum still relevant today? What would need to change to make it useful 20 years later?
It is my first day as a teacher and I am late. I did not account for time to satisfy security protocols. That is a rookie mistake! Countless lifetime experiences have taught me to allow for additional time to get through security.
I stand patiently, calmly, face forward, hat off, so the guard can match the young Black man with the short haircut on my driver’s license with the young Black man with the dreadlocks standing in front of him. I would get a new ID but those DMV lines are brutal.
Liberty Partnerships Program is a nonprofit housed at Bank Street College of Education. They hire me to teach a college-level hip-hop course to high school students who attend their after-school program. Someone on their staff recommended me after watching me perform and speak at his school.
Liberty is a college-bound program, founded in 1989. It serves low-income Black and Brown youth, many traveling long distances from Harlem, The Bronx, and NYC’s outer boroughs. Bank Street College is located in uptown Manhattan off of Broadway in one of New York City’s most affluent neighborhoods. It nestles Columbia University with its picturesque ivory towers and lush green lawns in between Central Park to the east and the Hudson River to the west.
In October 2003, I did not know Bank Street College was a pillar of progressive education. I did not know what the word pedagogy meant or that there was a hip-hop version of it taking shape across the country. I was honored to be asked to teach a college-level course by Liberty and committed myself to providing the type of educational experiences I found lacking throughout my many, many years of school.
Speaking of college, I dropped out of my third community college in the spring of 2003. Each year, I became increasingly disappointed with the lack of academic rigor and engagement. Though I did not stay in school, being a spoken word artist made these the most intellectually stimulating years of my young adult life. As a performance poet I visited dozens of universities, many I was learning about for the first time.
I give myself 90 minutes to commute from Jamaica, Queens, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This should have given me enough time to catch the Q3 bus, transfer to the F train, and then connect to the 1 train uptown, oops, downtown one stop, down and up two flights of stairs to get to the uptown platform. I finally arrive at the front door with only minutes to get upstairs before I am officially late for my first class.
The guard at the front desk is a Black man. I usually take notice because security guards are often the only Black adult males working inside of the school buildings I work in. To my surprise the guard is expecting me. He gives me careful directions. I walk through the sea of White faces wondering what this experience might feel like for my future students. I made it to Liberty’s office on time.
After our professional development session, Farhad provides me with a detailed roster for the 13 students, including students’ phone numbers, grade level, and guardian’s names and phone numbers. I immediately went home and planned the dopest, funky freshest lesson plan ever planned.
On the first day of class, I opened with a 10-minute “greeting,” in which I told the class about myself and performed a couple of poems. Then we take 15 minutes to introduce ourselves by sharing our names, favorite artists, song or poem, and our expectations for the class. I review the day’s agenda and transition into Activity 1.
The first activity was designed to “help students understand how hip-hop music and culture influences their consciousness.” With coaching from Liberty’s director, I fast-forward our curriculum timeline, beginning my first session with what I had planned for Session 2:
Developing Critical Thinking Skills: We will discuss the most popular themes/genres in hip-hop music. Students will break down lyrics and images and discuss critical analysis.
Content – We will listen to several different songs and determine the main idea, themes and perspective of the artists.
While “discuss critical analysis” is objectively not a sentence, the intent was clear: to have students analyze texts of popular hip-hop music to develop their critical thinking skills. To achieve this, I begin with a game. I am a fan of games, card games, board games, computer games, video games, sports, theater games. Even my engagement in poetry slam was fueled by the democratizing elements I appreciate in gaming.
In groups, I asked students to list 10 items in a specific category as quickly as possible. I wanted the students to see how easy it was to list categories based on popular culture (rappers, actors, clothing brands, athletes), versus how challenging it would be to list categories not discussed in youth popular culture, like politicians, countries in Africa, entrepreneurs, and poets (non-White). While my notes explicitly stated, “This is a non-competitive activity,” I distinctly remember coaching each team to do better than the others. I give them 90 seconds to complete the list and use a stopwatch to time them.
The game begins. Category 1: Emcees. Within the first 30 seconds, Group 1 had a complete list of 10 names. I let the other groups finish but I announce Group 1 as the winner when they were all done. Group 1 seems to have a phenom on their team—a young woman named Shaniqua. Forget whether or not your imagination will either confirm or destroy the stereotyped image of little Black girls names Shaniqua. What you need to know is that she gave Group 1 an unfair advantage because she was ahead of all of us in her thinking. Next, Category 2: Actors. Group 1 wins again. I skipped clothing brands and moved right to Category 3: Athletes. I encouraged Group 2 to get back into the game. They had most of the boys in their group, so I gender-normatively suggest they attempt to win this round. Group 2 won. Having different winners was important for keeping the game alive. Perhaps the other groups will reinvest in the game. Hopefully, Shaniqua was more intrigued.
I let the students know those were the “easy” categories. Then, we moved on to the “challenging” categories. Round 2, Category 1: Countries in Africa. Ouch! I delighted as their faces contorted for 90 seconds, as none of the groups were able to name more than five African countries. Yes, you already said Egypt, and no Guyana is not in Africa.
At this point in the activity, the students were starting to get frustrated with the game. I pushed through. I wanted the students to recognize just how limited their content knowledge was. Once they could not collectively list more than five of the 50-plus African countries, I believed they would not be able to list 10 non-White entrepreneurs or poets. My goal was to spark dialogue and perhaps an “aha” moment of the way popular culture dominates our collective consciousness. To keep them engaged, I told them they could all work together as one team. They took the challenge. They were still invested in the game.
Round 2, Category 2: Entrepreneurs. Immediately, they named Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. Shaniqua from Group 1 quickly chimed in: “Russell Simmons is an entrepreneur, so is Puff Daddy, and Master P.” In a flash, they were up to five. The class also recognized that many hip-hop artists were also entrepreneurs; before we even got to a minute, they were up to 10. The same pattern happened for the final category, “Poets.” Maya Angelou, followed by Langston Hughes, then a list of emcees.
After Activity 1, I led a discussion using a list of guiding questions. My first question was about what students liked and did not like about the activity, a practice I continued throughout my practice. The youth quickly understood the concept of the impact of popular culture in shaping collective consciousness, but what we all were surprised by was just how heavily we leaned on hip-hop as a framework for engaging in fields outside of hip-hop.
After our discussion, we took a 10-minute break and took 20 minutes to create and sign a classroom contract. This was suggested by the Liberty staff and was a practice I would continue with young people in each and every class I taught. Most of the youth in my group had been enrolled in Liberty’s programs for several years and were accustomed to this practice. I remembered them confidently and quickly listing group agreements like “listening to each other,” “doing their best,” “having each other’s back,” and “trying new things.” I suggested some rules of my own, likely about being accountable to them to do my best and asking them to participate for the class to be successful. We quickly completed and signed the contract in less than 20 minutes and moved on to the next activity.
Our second activity was designed to analyze the values promoted in commercial hip-hop by looking at popular hip-hop lyrics. In October 2003, for the first time in Billboard history, Black artists had the top 10 most popular singles, nine of them being hip-hop:
“Get Low,” by Lil’ Jon & The Eastside Boyz, featuring the Ying Yang Twins,
“Shake Ya Tailfeather,” by Nelly, P. Diddy & Murphy Lee,
“Stand Up,” by Ludacris, featuring Shawnna,
“Damn!” by YoungBloodz, featuring Lil Jon,
“P.I.M.P.” by 50 Cent,
“Right Thurr,” by Chingy,
“Holidae In,” by Chingy, featuring Ludacris & Snoop Dogg,
“Frontin’,” by Pharrell, featuring Jay-Z,
“Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,” by Young Gunz.
I kept the students in their groups and handed out the lyrics of the nine hip-hop singles, inviting the students to conduct a lyrical breakdown, reading and discussing the lyrics and identifying the themes and main points. Each group reported what they found in the lyrics. During our discussion, the students grew disgusted and outraged as they referred to line after line instructing women what to do with their body parts. Lil’ Jon instructed women to “bend over to the front, touch your toes!” Nelly asked women to shake their tail-feathers. Chingy instructed women to “swing your hips when you’re walking” and “lick your lips when you’re talking.” Despite all of this hard work, 50 Cent found it important enough to repeat in his chorus that you still will not “get a dollar out of me.”
The students’ discussion was lively and dynamic. By the end of this activity, the students fully recognized just how vulgar and narrow the content was in mainstream rap music. They appeared to be hungry for more. I was hungry for more. I felt like my first class was a success and was ready to expose my students to critical, musical alternatives during our next session.
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