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Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education

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    When I was 20 years old, i started teaching at a juvenile prison.
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    While there were many things that separated us,
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    I quickly discovered my students and I had one big thing in common:
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    our love of hip hop.
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    For the next few years, rap music became the main content for the classes I taught,
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    and I saw disengaged students emerge as leaders and experts.
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    Through engaging elements of hiphop culture together,
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    students and I learned language arts, life skills,
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    and to love each other and ourselves more.
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    As I continued to observed the ways in which our education system is rigged
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    against black and latino students and students from low income communities,
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    I asked myself what else we as educators could learn from hiphop,
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    the insanely innovative and influential global phenomenon
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    that has emerged from these very same communities.
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    When I say hiphop, I'm not just talking about music
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    or music xxx dance, which are considered central elements.
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    I'm referring to the blend of instincts, confidence, and ingenuity
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    that develops in oppressed communities
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    as has been demonstrated through the evolution of hiphop culture.
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    I'm talking about the Jamaican teenager in the South Bronx
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    taking two records of the same song
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    and fading back and forth between them
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    to create a new musical composition
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    by playing the most danceable segment over and over.
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    I'm talking about the inspiring visual artists
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    realizing they didn't need galleries to represent them
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    for their work to be seen, and instead painting on train cars
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    and instantly having an audience of hundreds of thousands.
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    I'm talking about a highschool dropout from the projects of mercy
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    using his entrepeneurial hassle and rap skills
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    to go from selling drugs, to selling CDs out of the trunk of his car,
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    to selling products at Macy's.
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    This is what my colleagues and I call hiphop genius,
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    creative resourcefulnes in the face of limited resources,
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    or as it's often said in the hiphop community:
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    flipping something outta nothing.
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    How could this audacious approach impact our education system?
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    For starters, we need to exhibit the brush creativity of hiphop pioneers,
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    just as hiphop producers sample songs
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    from other genres creating unique new sounds to please
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    audience's ears, hiphop educators can borrow from diverse models
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    and improvise xxx blends of educational practices customised
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    to meet students needs.
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    If that sounds to abstract, take a look at the highschool
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    for recording arts in Minnesota, where they mix project based learning
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    and competency based assesment with artistic, vocational, and business training
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    with xxxx and xxx at local colleges, with a heavy dose of student leadership.
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    We don't have to do the same thing that's been done before or follow one model.
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    We can sample and mix multiple teaching techniques
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    and school designs to find the blends that best serve our students.
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    We also need to adapt the value hiphop places on staying fresh:
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    a hot beat yesterday ... was a hot beat yesterday.
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    Whoever sends out to make a hot beat today
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    has to do something new and different to remain relevant.
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    The world is changing rapidly around us.
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    The top ten jobs in 2010 didn't exist six years earlier.
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    Hiphop's premium on freshness must permeate our schools.
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    And we need to be resourceful.
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    In the 1970s, thousands of families chose to replace their
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    linoleum floors.
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    In poor neighbourhoods, the old linoleum was left in piles on the street.
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    Young people, without access to playgrounds or dance classes,
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    turned their parent's trash into dancefloors
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    and invented new moves like the windmill and the headspin
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    to maximize its potential.
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    Faced with our own resource constraints,
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    educators need to find new platforms,
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    what refuges could we be dancing on,
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    and what are our new moves.
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    Behind the mike, spray cans, turn tables and when it comes to their educations,
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    students have brilliant ideas and instincts.
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    Hiphop genius is not just about teachers using hiphop songs
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    to get kids to succeed in traditional schools.
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    It's about changing education to respect and build
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    from young people's brilliance.
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    It's about the incredible possibilities that occur
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    when students are engaged,
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    not just as consumers, but as creators.
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    We don't need to twig the content inside existing traditional academic structures.
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    We need to think outside the classroom and build
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    the institutions that are fundamentally more responsive
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    to young people's interest and ingenuity.
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    We need to create schools and school systems
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    that not only teach hiphop, they are hiphop.
Title:
Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education
Description:

learn more and get the book at http://www.hiphopgenius.org
follow on twitter at http://twitter.com/husslington

this video illustrates (literally!) the concept of Hip Hop Genius. these ideas are explored more fully in sam seidel's book, Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education (hiphopgenius.org)

the drawings were done by Mike McCarthy, a student at College Unbound (collegeunbound.org), a school that exemplifies many of the values espoused in the film. the entire video was shot in College Unbound's seminar space, where Mike has built a studio for his company Drawn Along (drawnalong.com).

the end sequence was shot by Graham Wheeler, a recent graduate of the East Bay Met (eastbaymet.org), a high school that also embodies many of the principles of Hip Hop Genius. Graham and Mike edited the whole video as well.

the beat at the end was made by DJ Tek, who worked with sam at the AS220 Broad Street Studio (as220.org/​youth)... their work there was the genesis of much of the thinking about Hip Hop Genius. several of the young people in the video are or have been affiliated with that program.

Tim Natividad collaborated with sam on the ideation and writing.

big shouts to everyone who appears in the video and to everyone who came through, but didn't make it in; big shouts to David "TC" Ellis, Tony Simmons, and everyone at the High School for Recording Arts (hsra.org); and big shouts to the whole Hip Hop Genius crew. check us out at HIPHOPGENIUS.org
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Video Language:
English
Team:
Volunteer
Duration:
04:23
artopal added a translation

English subtitles

Revisions

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