Hip Hop and High School

Hip hop has been making its way into schools for some time now (both in the US and abroad). Brian Mooney did it last year, even prompting a visit from Kendrick Lamar to his classroom, which you can read more about here and here, as well as on his blog. And long before, Tomas Alvarez III, a social worker in Oakland, California started one of the first programs called Beats Rhymes and Life at Berkeley High School in 2004. Based on a club he launched as part of his dissertation research, Ian Levy has developed a program at New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math and Science II in the Bronx as part of an expanding education movement to harness the widespread appeal of hip-hop music and culture to promote academic and social goals.

“Hip-hop education is everywhere,” said Christopher Emdin, an associate professor of science education at Teachers College at Columbia University who moderates a weekly chat group on Twitter called #HipHopEd and, along with the artist GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan, sponsors an annual competition for students to rap about science. “There is no school in an urban area that does not know about hip-hop, or that has not experimented with it.”

Read the full article here and check out Mr. Levy’s Donors Choose page here.