it has been a long, long while

and for the first time in a long time, i feel like writing. i feel like writing about this new life that i have created.

i've been teacher for, oh, 3 years and 8 months now. 8 months since the end of my year-long break, 8 months since i returned to my calling. it has been a rocky road. nothing about teaching at a great school in a high-performing charter network is easy. writing lessons isn't easy, managing students isn't easy, finding time to get all my crap done isn't easy...loving the kids as much as i do isn't easy.

today i felt like singing until i had a meeting with my boss that left me feeling teary. i cry way too easily, granted, but i didn't feel good after a week that left me tired and mentally drained. i worked and worked and worked my butt off all week, only to hear that everything i did wasn't quite good enough. being a perfectionist, getting constant feedback is hard- obviously noone is ever perfect when working with other people (there's always tons of room for mistakes), but sometimes you don't want to hear it. sometimes you just want to try to feel good about what you've done without any critical feedback. :/

forever learning.

next week i'm off to california for 10ish days with 63 kids...whoo hoo? we'll be visiting my alma mater along with other schools and i'm super excited to spend some time having fun with my loves. wish me luck- i'm rooming with some of the biggest drama queens in the grade!

feels good to be back...

again

again, a new classroom.
again, a new place to live.
again, a new roommate (though this one is also an old roommate- yay!).
again, a new boy.
again, new beginnings.
again, this unsettling apprehension/excitement for things to come.

it's the beginning of the school year, folks! and i'm not ready...
***

i've taken a long hiatus. it's been interesting to sit with all of my thoughts instead of typing up half of them to share with the world. august, well, all of this summer, really, has been a hectic haze. lots of running around, worrying and stressing, not nearly enough fun. but all the people in my life who faced health challenges are very much on the mend (melissa can even eat tomatoes! no other fruits, but tomatoes are a start!), i finally found a place to lay my head for (hopefully) more than a year (and it has a backyard!), and after a very busy dating season i think i'm settling into something more promising. phew. now all i have to do is pack and move, and get used to teacher hours (24/7) again.

here we go.

definitely challenging

a 9 year old's parents approached school officials in haverford, pa to ask for the school's help in their child's transition from dressing as a boy to dressing as a girl. i'm not sure how i would deal with the issue. (or how i could see any school i've ever worked in dealing with it!). this school chose to have an assembly for all the students, explaining the situation and asking the children to refrain from using unkind words. apparently (and unsurprisingly) the kids are doing a better job of this than their parents are. kudos to the child's parents for taking a stand for their baby.

the article is definitely worth a read.

it was like i never left

it has been another busy day, and it continues, but i have to quickly take a moment to thank whoever it is that puts us on this earth for allowing me to find my calling in the classroom. i saw my children today and it was like i never left. i sometimes have to remind myself that some of the most profound connections i have had with people were found in a classroom, and that there are very few things that mean more to me than my children. sometimes i forget what it means to love them, and how it feels to receive that love in return, and what my purpose in life is. i forget, but then i see terrell and ruthie and navaskia and the kevins and cliffannie and alexis and they ask me to return, to come to their houses, to hear about their mom and how she lost her job or how grandma is sick and i remember that my calling is to serve them. and i realize that returning to the classroom next year is absolutely the right decision. slowly but surely it all becomes clear.

maybe one day, one of my/our students

will thank me/us as eloquently as this young person has thanked their teachers (some of whom may be my old cali colleagues!).

appreciation never gets old, and i, for one, prefer it out of the mouths of the children than from anywhere else. read afika khan:



Thank you, teachers

An L.A. Unified grad gives some gratitude during a hard time for schools.
By Afika Khan
April 1, 2008
After reading "With jobs on the line, teachers explore their options," regarding layoff notices teachers are receiving, I wanted to say thank you to teachers who have stayed in the educational system, however bad it may be.

Your resilience is very impressive to say the least. Year after year, you get thrown around because of budget cuts in the education system. Budget cuts have encroached on every aspect of your careers. Thoughts of simply surrendering to this supposedly admirable governor and getting a job that is less agonizing must have crossed your minds, but you persist and remain dedicated to public schools. On behalf of myself and probably all the students whose minds you have nourished with hopes of a successful future, thank you.

I wish thanking you was enough. This year will be especially hard on you. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger expects to cut billions of dollars out of the education system in California. There are prospects of teachers getting laid off. However, the Los Angeles Unified School District has decided not to lay off any teachers. A burden of insecurity has been removed from these teachers' backs, but an even larger one has replaced it: dealing with larger classroom sizes, inadequate school supplies and even salary cuts.

You teachers have developed a hard shell because of these inconveniences. As the governor keeps taking money away from the system every year, your shell grows thicker. It is not right that you to have to conform to such intolerable measures. Managing such inconsistencies and frustrations is a noble and honorable act in itself.

Having grown up in the L.A. Unified system from kindergarten through my senior year in high school, I remember seeing countless teachers exhausted and frustrated. However, when it was time to teach, they came in the classroom with conviction and amazing strength. I could tell they loved their work, but it was as if they were fighting a war that they were too drained to fight. Thank you for not giving up. I would not be at a four-year university were it not for your dedication.

We cannot keep treating teachers this way. California has one of the largest economies in the world, yet it ends up being one of the worst states in education funding. According to Education Weekly, our school finance is worse than that of Louisiana, even after Hurricane Katrina. It is ironic that although the governor could risk his life to save a class of kindergartners in a movie, when it comes to real life, he is hurting kindergartners by continually neglecting the teachers who help them learn and develop. Someone needs to tell him to stop terminating teachers and fix this problem.

In May, the governor might make revisions to the budget plan. To save schools from budget cuts, the state could increase taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, or on sales of concert tickets, CDs and DVDs. He can even tax the distribution of candy. Maybe then he can redeem himself at the "May revise" and start saying he "will revise."

I do not know when Schwarzenegger is going to realize that investing in teachers and the education system would be most beneficial for California. If he does not do it soon, the education system could very well start to crumble, and there will be even more instability than there is now. Such deterioration could lead to a ripple effect in the economy. Without knowledgeable teachers guiding society, the very ideals of democracy could be jeopardized.

So I thank teachers for having the strength and patience to continue teaching.

Afika Khan, a USC sophomore studying political science and international relations, attended schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 13 years.

preparing myself

career day at my old school is april 17th. i haven't seen my kids since last june. i am ready. i miss them.


i'm already thinking about what i should bake to bring.




it feels like yet another homecoming.

this ain't no normal teaching job

saw these today-- the requirements for being considered for the $125,000 teaching job at the new charter experiment here in new york. crazy!

TEP Charter

Rigorous Qualifications
Meta-analyses of studies of teacher characteristics show that while the effects of some teacher characteristics (e.g. degree level, teacher preparation, teacher certification) on student achievement are inconclusive, other characteristics such as teacher academic proficiency [i], teacher verbal ability [ii], and teacher content-area knowledge [iii] are strongly related to improving student achievement. In addition, a certain threshold of teaching experience has been shown to have important positive effects on student achievement, since teachers tend to improve dramatically in their first few years in the classroom. [iv]

Using this research on highly-effective teachers, TEP has developed 8 requirements that its teachers must meet in order to demonstrate their qualifications in 4 major areas. The 4 areas are:

(1) Expert Subject-Area Knowledge demonstrated through
(a) a 90% or higher standardized test score in relevant subject area*
(b) significant undergraduate and/or graduate coursework and excellent grades in relevant subject area

(2) Outstanding Verbal Ability demonstrated through
(a) a 90% or higher score in the verbal section of the GRE or GMAT or LSAT*
(b) two writing samples, one long-form and one-short form

(3) Teaching Expertise and Experience demonstrated through
(a) a portfolio of achievement of past students, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data
(b) three live teaching auditions
(c) an essay describing personal pedagogical beliefs and approach

(4) Strong Curriculum Development Ability demonstrated through
(a) one originally developed and refined curricular tool of any form (e.g. written materials, instructional methodology, technological innovation).

*Note: You may submit a Preliminary Application even if you have not yet achieved the required standardized exam scores. You will be required to take the required exams at a later stage in the application process.

the surface of the moon is like:

grooving to your favorite DJ!

(insert booty-shake here) (this was our ItAG warm up tonight, and it swept aaaaaaallll the demeaning crap of my workday away...)

***

i was having a completely shitty day today until i got to ItAG tonight. to quickly give you a sense of what the last 7 weeks have been like...our goals:

*What do we want?*

We want ideas. We want resources. We want inspiration. We want to share
ideas. We want to be challenged. We want to be stimulated. We want engaging
dialogue. We want to use what we learn. We want to understand
theory/practice.

We want to talk about classroom management & negotiating roles. We want
positive & constructive dialogue without denying experience or truth. We
want to know, where are all the males?

*What do we need?*

We need common threads. We need resources. We need active listening. We need
real conversations – with respect, love, and safe space. We need to be open
to ideas, each other, difficulties, and discomfort. We need to find purpose
in education. We need to negotiate the bureaucracies. We need to be a part
of a larger support network. We need realistic application with limited
resources.

*Why are we here?*

We want to get involved. We want to continue prior experience. We want to
share best practices with like minds. We want to empower classroom though
social Justice. We are here to figure out how to negotiate the gap between
politics/intention and practice. We're angry (and there's reason to be.) We
want to look at the works. We want pure enjoyment. We want to reinvigorate
ourselves in practice. We want to talk about empowerment & be a part of
history. We want to analyze the dangers and risks and conflicts
(generational, institutional, cultural…). We want to understand the
potential for symbiotic (reciprocal) relationship between student/teacher.
We want to grow and continue being fighters for our students.


to find a beautiful space in which you can let go is a blessing. NYCoRE did that for me this winter, and i am, like i am so often, very thankful. i've made new connections that touch my heart, and i feel fulfilled. now i just need to throw a party and get everyone together! :)

as usual, i'm late on this

can you believe this?! and what happens when the money gets old? or the lazy kids start kicking the smart kids' asses for their money instead of earning it themselves?

um, mr. klein? mr. fryer? when was the last time you actually went to a struggling middle school and observed behavior? and when was the last 30 bucks impressed a kid that would rather be out on the streets selling weed? and how do you think this incentive money will be spent? buying new notebooks?

i want to start my own school really, really badly until i read things like this...

***

on a slightly different note, whoa. $125,000?

the academy fails us again

and denies an incredible scholar and activist, who happens to be a woman of color, tenure. the women's studies @ univ. of michigan is the offending party here. if you know of prof. andrea smith's work and are interested in supporting her with your words, find information after the link.

why is education in this country so treacherous?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 25, 2008
Statement of University of Michigan Students and Faculty in Support of Andrea Smith’s Tenure Case
CONTACT: TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

On February 22nd, 2008, University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) issued a negative tenure recommendation for Assistant Professor Andrea Lee Smith. Jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies, Dr. Smith’s body of scholarship exemplifies scholarly excellence with widely circulated articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous books in both university and independent presses including Native Americans and the Christian Right published this year by Duke University Press. Dr. Smith is one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time. A nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Smith has an outstanding academic and community record of service that is internationally and nationally recognized. She is a dedicated professor and mentor and she is an integral member of the University of Michigan (UM) intellectual community. Her reputation and pedagogical practices draw undergraduate and graduate students from all over campus and the nation.

Dr. Smith received the news about her tenure case while participating in the United States’ hearings before the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Ironically, during those very same hearings, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions that restricted affirmative action policies at UM specifically were cited as violations of international law. At the same time, there is an undeniable link between the Department of Women’s Studies and LSA’s current tenure recommendations and the long history of institutional restrictions against faculty of color. In 2008, students of color are coming together to protest the way UM’s administration has fostered an environment wherein faculty of color are few and far between, Ethnic Studies course offerings have little financial and institutional support, and student services for students of color are decreasing each year.

To Support Professor Andrea Smith: The Provost must hear our responses! Write letters in support of Andrea Smith’s tenure case. Address email letters to ALL of the following:

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu
* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu
* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu
* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

Voice your ideas on the web forum at http://www.woclockdown.org/

To Support Women of Color at Michigan and the Crisis of Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies:

Attend the student organized March 15th Conference at UM!!!!

Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex is free and open to the public.

Speakers include renowned activists and scholars Piya Chatterjee, Angela Davis, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Ruthie Gilmore, Fred Moten, Clarissa Rojas, and Haunani-Kay Trask. For more information and to register, visit: http://www.woclockdown.org/.

TALKING POINTS YOU CAN USE IN YOUR SUPPORT LETTER:
• Smith is author of the following books:
o Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
o Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely
Alliances
o Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites
• Smith is editor and/or co-editor of the following anthologies:
o Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology
o The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial
Complex
o Native Feminisms Without Apology
o Forthcoming on theorizing Indigenous Studies
• She has published 15 peer reviewed articles in widely circulated academic journals
including American Quarterly, Feminist Studies, National Women’s Studies
Association Journal, Hypatia, Meridians, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in
Religion
• Smith is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards from organizations such as the Lannan Foundation, University of Illinois, Gustavus Myers Foundation, Ford
Foundation
• Smith was cited in the U.S. Non-Governmental Organization Consolidated Shadow
Report to the United Nations
• A co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Chicago chapter
of Women of All Red Nations, she has been a key thinker behind large-scale national
and international efforts to develop remedies for ending violence against women
beyond the criminal justice system. As a result of her work, scholars, social service
providers, and community-based organizations throughout the United States have
shifted from state-focused efforts to more systemic approaches for addressing
violence against women. In recognition of her contributions, Smith was nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
• As of June 2007, Professor Smith’s book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American
Indian Genocide (2005) had sold over 8,000 copies. Three-fourths of these sales
have gone to college and university courses. In addition, the leading Native studies
organization, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association organized a
special panel about this book at their last annual conference (2007). The international impact of Conquest is evidenced by its reprinting in Sami (Sweden) and in Maori Institutions in New Zealand; by Professor Smith’s invitation to participate in an academic workshop in Germany based on the book; and by the book’s frequent use in Native Studies classrooms in Canada.
• She has also played a key role in contributing social-justice based research, teaching, and community building at the University of Michigan.
• Under Andrea Smith’s mentorship, a large number of undergraduate and graduate
students have grown as intellectual members of the UM’s campus community.

FACTS FOR DR. ANDREA SMITH’S TENURE CASE
• Her intellectual work contributes to the fields of Native American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, and American Studies.
• Smith is jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies at Michigan.
• The Program in American Culture gave a positive recommendation for Smith’s tenure, while the Department of Women’s Studies gave a negative recommendation. After the tenure recommendations were released from the two departments, the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts reviewed the tenure file and also gave a negative tenure recommendation.
• She is currently the Director of Native American Studies at Michigan.

letter and info courtesy of la chola.

what will NCLB mean in 2008?

i dunno, and after a long debate last night, i'm not sure i'm ready to start to even think about it. my pal r. l'heureux lewis, though, ruminates upon the subject over at the root. check it out: "Please Leave it Behind."

hip hop ed- it matters!

city on a hill press has something to say about hip-hop in schools, and the power of our words...read on.


Education to a Brand New Beat

By Elizabeth Limbach

It’s a Tuesday morning in Inglewood, California, and Ms. Gray’s 5th grade class is talking about Nas.

“It’s almost like he’s being hypocritical,” one student articulated. “I know that he has made songs that are really positive, talking about how black people were kings and queens, and now he’s wearing this T-shirt.”

The previous day, the rapper had shown up to the 2008 Grammy’s with the word “nigger” boldly written across his chest to promote his forthcoming album of the same title. And, despite their youth, these fifth graders asked some heavy questions about the superstar.

“They [were] asking me if he understands the effects it would have on black youth who would see it, and how people all over the world might now think it’s OK to call him this,” said teacher Salina Gray. “I thought that was really profound for 10-year-olds.”

Gray is one of the many teachers across the country who uses hip-hop in the classroom to engage students, most of whom are generally disconnected from the standardized curriculum.

A growing number of hip-hop educators, scholars and activists are currently uniting in a budding hip-hop education movement to counter this disengagement.

Concrete figures on the movement may be nonexistent, but the sheer variety of grassroots and community-based hip-hop education organizations and quantity of available hip-hop lesson plans reveal the trend’s growing size. And while these groups and individual teachers are separately scattered from coast-to-coast, they share the common goal of empowering youth through hip-hop culture.

Hip-Hop Education 101
Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit,
Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit,
When water boils, a liquid becomes gas,
Gravity makes rain drop down fast,
Now you know science, so don’t ever say, ‘I can’t’
Now it’s time to say the Science Chant
— excerpt from “The Science Chant” by Dr. Ron Kelley

Hip-hop education manifests itself in the classroom in as many ways as it appears in popular culture. From math raps that teach multiplication to giving the option of presenting a book report as a hip-hop song, the possibilities are endless.

The practice utilizes the four traditional elements of hip-hop culture — DJing, MCing, breakdancing and graffiti — in one of three educational approaches: as a hook to get the students interested in a lesson, as a tool for teaching the disciplines, and, thirdly, as a subject in and of itself.

In her 13 years of teaching, Gray has found that hip-hop is an invaluable way to get her students invested in their education. Not only as a means of teaching curriculum, but also as a platform for discussing the myriad of social, political, economic and personal issues that are packed into hip-hop culture and reflect the larger society.

“Hip-hop is a vehicle to talk about very complicated facts of society in a way that they understand and are interested in,” she said. “We talk about misogyny, patriarchy and racism. Then we’ll bring in a song and deconstruct it, and the students are able to point [them] out.”

Using popular culture in the classroom is nothing new. Most educators behind this movement were using hip-hop in their classes long before they found one another and united in the cause. And while few here in small town Santa Cruz may be aware of its mounting presence in inner-city education, it is becoming increasingly popular in K-12 classes, after-school programs, prisons and youth camps throughout the country.

Thanks to the recent efforts of numerous non-profit, community-based and national organizations, individual teachers now have the help of a legion of hip-hop educational resources, from lesson plans and student workbooks to teacher training courses and conferences. Even the New York Times, PBS and the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame offer hip-hop lesson plans.

The New York-based hip-hop Association (H2A) recently published the Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume 1, the first all-encompassing set of hip-hop lesson plans that cover all subjects and meet education standards.

Martha Diaz, H2A president and founder, found the inspiration for the education initiative (H2ed) from her years of using hip-hop as a teacher in the Bronx. After putting on three H2A teacher-training summits, Diaz saw an opportunity to make hip-hop education into a tangible reality for other educators.

“We realized there were some amazing lesson plans out there,” she said. “Educators were rocking it all over the world and we needed to show that, so we self-published the book that would highlight the best ones and prove that it can be used in the classroom, standardized and everything — you won’t get in trouble for it.”

The guidebook’s lessons range from an activity for middle school students that uses break dance moves to teach the muscle groups to one for high schoolers entitled “Who Runs Your Streets? Introducing Democracy, the Electoral Process and Government Into the Classroom.” The latter intertwines Eminem’s politically focused music video “Mosh” with a study on the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Frederick Douglass.

In addition to using hip-hop to cover core subjects, Diaz believes it has great potential for teaching violence prevention, social skills, entrepreneurship, community organizing and to help develop artistic talents. She attributes these many possibilities to the multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-ethnic identity of hip-hop, something that is often overshadowed by current, mainstream perceptions of the culture.

“It isn’t what people think it is,” Diaz said. “It is a part of the culture for a reason. It is our role in educating the community in how to use hip-hop in a positive way in the classroom, after school and for community development.”

Answering Cries for Help: While programs like H2ed and D.C. based hip-hop Education Literacy Program (HELP), which Gray employs, seek to remedy the lack of engagement in inner city classrooms, they are still only addressing the problem from within the system — a system that may need to be radically changed before these groups of students are properly incorporated and cared for. Gray, along with most hip-hop educators, recognizes this.

“Historically, and even currently, urban public schools, which pretty much means schools where there are black and brown youth, were not designed with the notion of creating analytical thinkers who were going to go on to become the next wave of local leaders, entrepreneurs, etc,” Gray said. “A lot of schools are basically warehouses that shuffle kids from grade to grade, preparing them to become low-income wage earners and some would even say criminals.”

Tricia Rose, hip-hop scholar, author and professor of African Studies at Brown University, cautions against seeing hip-hop education as a means in itself for solving this education crisis.

“These are all strategies for managing disenfranchisement and lack of education,” Rose said. “Whatever we can do is great but we can’t put a Band-Aid on the fundamental problem; hip-hop can’t fix the fundamental problem.’”

While this may be true, the efforts of hip-hop education can help to soothe the current educational estrangement of urban students. According to those mobilizing the movement, students are marginalized mainly by what the system doesn’t do: the curriculum does not cover their histories, cultures or communities, and the teaching staff often does not reflect the student body. Not surprisingly, then, these students find spaces outside of the classroom, such as hip-hop culture, much more relatable.

Baba Zumbi, perhaps more commonly known as Zion from the Oakland-based underground rap group Zion-I, realizes the authority the hip-hop industry has over youth. As a former second and third grade teacher, Zumbi recalls that the young students’ loyalty already lay with hip-hop and not with their education.

“They would come in every day with the latest Usher song or Bustah Rhymes or whoever, and they’d know every lyric,” he remembers. “And I’d be like, ‘How do you know that song, but when I give you this piece of paper on something we’ve been doing for two weeks straight you don’t want to do it?’”

He soon realized that embracing hip-hop as a means of education would be the most effective way of changing this.

Andrew Landers, a special education teacher at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem, New York, agrees that school and education are falling far behind in the scope of students’ main influences.

“Where I live there are a lot of other things at the forefront of the child’s universe other than education,” Landers said. “There are problems with the family, or problems right in front of you on the street all the time. When there is so much else going on, [it is hard when] you are trying to get your students excited about something.”

Landers, who is now the co-director of H2A’s education initiative, started using hip-hop to find something that would make his students, many of whom are what he calls “reluctant learners,” feel like education was something they were a part of.

“All the students I’m working with love hip-hop, so in that form I was using hip-hop as a way to spark interest and create educational moments,” he said.

As something familiar, interesting and packed full of culturally relevant meanings, Landers says that hip-hop allowed his students to bring what they knew and cared about into the classroom.

“[Hip-hop education] is showing respect for the student’s life and interests, which is something they desire and don’t get a lot of.”

Hip-Hop Education, a community-based organization in Chicago that works with youth to create positive hip-hop music, believes that music, and hip-hop especially, can help to keep children on the right track.

Sabrina Wiggins, CEO and co-founder of the organization, said that programs like hers must be more widely implemented in order for this to happen.

“We want to try to get in to the school systems, and some of the juvenile systems as well, because they need our help right now,” Wiggins said. “They’re crying out for our help and no one is really there to help them at this point.”

The program works with young children to create positive alternatives to mainstream music. They write and record songs that discuss serious issues like 9/11 in a child-relevant manner, but also instructional raps about remembering to “Buckle Up” and brush your teeth.

“’The Toothbrush Song’ was created for my youngest daughter,” Wiggins explained. “When she gets up in the morning, she sings along to that song and knows ‘okay, I need to brush my teeth.’”

*“The Kids Just Don’t Know”*: As a junior high school teacher in Oakland, California, Jamal Cooks began to realize that his students, although they whole-heartedly identified with hip-hop, actually knew very little about the culture or history.

“The kids don’t know,” said Cooks, who is now a PhD Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University and creator of the online teacher resource bank, hip-hop Circuit. “It’s important that if you call yourself a hip hopper, if you see yourself as being a part of hip-hop culture, [you have an] understanding about its history and where it came from, and that it was about a socio-political movement of a group of people.”

Thus, hip-hop education, when done properly, also encompasses lessons on its history, roots and pivotal figures such as Afrika Bambaata, KRS-One and Public Enemy. Teachers also rely on positive modern day examples, such as Lauryn Hill, Common, Talib Kweli and Kanye West, to promote conscious hip-hop to their students. Cooks, who has even used Will Smith when working with elementary school children, explains that educating kids on the positive powers of hip-hop would not only provide them with better influences and perspectives, but also lend toward a brighter future for the genre.

“If they understand the history of hip-hop, I think they can respect hip-hop culture a whole lot more,” Cooks said. “The next hip-hop artist is hopefully going to be the kids coming out of my classroom, [so] hopefully [hip-hop education] can impact the future generation of hip-hop artists.”

“Hip and Hop is not just music/ Hip is the knowledge/ Hop is the movement” –KRS-ONE

In the day and age of No Child Left Behind and high-stakes testing, administrators and older teachers are rarely willing to teach anything that doesn’t correspond directly to standardized tests. hip-hop educators are also facing opposition from those who are reluctant to stray from the canon or hesitant about their ability to teach hip-hop.

Cooks is determined to deconstruct this last reason, which he cites as one of the main myths about hip-hop education.

“[There is] the perception that if you do hip-hop in the classroom, the teacher has to come in with their pants sagging and Timbaland boots, and that’s not what I’m saying,” Cooks said. “I’m saying allow the students an opportunity and a space to bring in a piece of their lives, a piece of their identity, which could be hip-hop, into the classroom.”

Educators including H2A’s Diaz and Landers agree that the movement needs the legitimacy of studies and research to be more widely accepted by administrations. H2A will be publishing a report on effectiveness later this year, from which Diaz expects positive results. She is confident that current hip-hop education and activism will make visible differences in the future of hip-hop culture.

“All of these seeds that everyone is planting will create a whole new generation of youth that are leaders,” she said. “It’s not cool to be dumb anymore, hang out on the corner and smoke blunts. It’s cool to have the latest technology, its cool to know world issues, it’s cool to know our history. So we are cultivating this new generation and hopefully we will have created future hip hop ambassadors.”

These future ambassadors, local leaders and next generation hip-hoppers still have a lot working against them in the current educational system. Until larger education issues are addressed, the hip-hop education movement will continue to fight for the academic success of disengaged youth.

Cooks, who maintains a sense of optimism characteristic of the movement, has a hopeful vision for the future of inner-city education that hip-hop could help generate.

“I want to be able to walk into any classroom across the country, especially in urban, inner-city areas, and see kids wanting to learn and excited about learning,” Cooks said. “If it comes up on test scores, fine. But more importantly, if that makes that kid come back the next day because they’re excited to be in a class, or if something they talked about in a hip-hop song allowed them to be able to make a good decision outside of school, to be able to get out of that situation and make it back to school the next day, to me those are most important things.”

conscious women rock the page!

that's the name of the curriculum i've been spending so much time on for the last few months! we are winding down the production process, and the curriculum is going to come out in march.

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2008 ~ Year of the Hip-Hop Woman!

Coming March '08
Conscious Women Rock the Page:
Using Hip-Hop Fiction to Incite Social Change
A one-of-a-kind curriculum

by: JLove, Black Artemis, E-Fierce and Marcella Runell Hall
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check out the writers' websites for more information on their work. they are an incredible group of women doing good things for the world!

the practice

what does it mean to do "good work"? when is our work just what it is? when can we be satisfied with our practice as educators?

these are questions that i ask myself constantly, trying my best to chart the right path. i'm smack dab in the middle of my twenties and i am still unsure of direction. sometimes i think things are taking shape, but then i lose focus and things blur. it's hard.

i have a funky idea knocking about in my head. i'm just wrapping the hip-hop curriculum now, and i'm thinking that i'd like to start my own project next. maybe something to do with bringing black (or third world/us?) feminist literature/work/artistry to the K-12 classroom? ways to bring all the great literature and ideas to which we are so often not exposed until college into middle school and high school? not sure what it would look like, but i'm kind of obsessed with the idea. maybe a collection of reflections of teachers (male and female, of-color and not) who have tried to push students to confront white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in the classroom using the work of women of color, a la rethinking schools?

dunno, dunno, dunno. but if you read this and think you might be interested, holler back.

a quote from michelle obama (god, she's smart):

“I realized that gnawing sense of self doubt that lies within all of us is within our own heads. The truth is we are more ready and more prepared than we even know. My own life is proof of that.”

if you read this before 8 am (EST),

say a little prayer for me...

big things going on, my friends, big things.

more lates.

unlikely suspects

i'm sifting through old files tonight, feeling a little crazed and a lot stressed, and i found this poem i wrote almost three years ago (!) about my boys. i think this file found me because it knew i needed some sustenance. i don't know if i'd write the same way today as i did back then in '05, but i believe in honoring the past so i'll share it with you (again, if you're an old-school reader from back in the lj days):

unlikely suspects

no one thought they would want to be cheerleaders.

they surprised us all

smiling their beautiful smiles,
backflipping as easy as they walk,
giggling as they are caught unawares actually enjoying themselves,
they treat the girls, their friends and sisters and cousins, with a respect that is catching:
they are my little and not-so-little gentlemen.

laughing and playing,
silly they are

at once like (in the comradery) and unlike (in the self-hatred) the
gun-toting
curse-throwing
hypnotiq-drinking
destroyers
that they will be
in so many a mind’s eye
sooner than i would like to think

simply,
happy.

little black boys see the world as their oyster.
they see the world as
jamaica
and the bronx
and DR,
as kingston and santo domingo,
as EBAFF and room 213.
as they grow, so will the world, and it will change them.
if only they knew to be careful
if only they knew to stay happy

i don’t ever want to forget you,
little black boys.

i don’t ever want to forget you,
just like this.

book learnin'

had my kick-off session of an Inquiry to Action Group (ItAG) with the New York Collective of Radical Educators tonight. i am SO READY to get my brain in gear and engage with other like-minded kid-lovers. so ready to learn and stretch my mind, to stretch my expectations, and to stretch my understandings of myself. ready to make new friends and new connections.

for monday:
freire's letter to north american educators,
chris vine's interview with augusto boals,
and donaldo macedo's intro to "pedagogy of the oppressed"

it doesn't get much better than this.

upgrade you

gotta love that beyonce jam. the upgrade chain in the mouth is a little nasty, but hey, why can't a girl have a little fun, right?

my boss asked me today what my top three personal goals are for the next two years. she wants to be my fairy boss and grant me three professional wishes (and thereby keep me from running off to grad school/back to the classroom/off to a position that actually pays). that, of course, made me think. what are my top three personal/professional goals for the next two years? what would i really like to accomplish?

1. publishing something would be nice, i think. a book with my name on it, and learning how to do some press for such a book would be ideal.
2. honing my management skills, and adding a major management project to my resume. not sure what the project would be, but i really want something that proves that i know how to manage people and not just information.
3. #3 is up in the air, folks, and baffling me just a little. any suggestions?

gift for the 4th (i open them before i go to bed because i am a 5 year old in a mid-twenties, quickly widening body ;)): two pairs of socks. cute. striped. but still not an ipod. :(

i don't know how they do it

teaching little kids seems reeeaaaalllly difficult. i'm in charge of writing a curriculum/workbook for K-4, and i'm feeling at a loss. I have no memory of my elementary school years, and I didn't even GO to second grade. I have no sense of what kids (can) learn at that age, and as the biggest critic of the curriculum that we're scratching, i need this to actually be good.

oh, career challenges.

professional know-how

how does one become one of those beautiful, put-together, educated black women whose blogs one reads out there in the blogosphere? well-dressed, well-read, with a ph.d., a beautifully appointed apartment, a loving partner, great cooking skills and a bag of important contacts all over the country/world, and under 30?

that's what i'm trying to figure out. i'm almost 25, which means if i plan on getting a ph.d. i need to get to it, quick. i also need to get in shape, NOW, so i'm looking into gym membership and personal training for the winter. maybe i should have applied to grad school this winter. maybe not getting my recs together was a big mistake. i don't know. i don't know where i would want to go, or what i would want to study, but i feel like time is passing me by!

boo. all i currently do is confuse myself, to be honest. i run in circles in my head, weighing my decisions. i'm happy to say i think i'm moving forward on the professional connections piece, but i still haven't quite figured out where they're taking me.

i think it's kinda sad that i use my days off to worry about work. :(

anyway, it's saturday. party on!