I. Entry events.
A. Spark Curiosity by showing students a map of music produced around the world. Facilitate a class discussion about what the map means
B. Show a video clip of the news anchors criticizing rap/ hip-hop music and culture. Facilitate a class discussion on silencing and lyrics.
C. Students will make a playlist of music. I'll ask for hip-hop music but will be flexible with their preferred music. They will journal about their choice and which lyrics speak to them and how.
II. As a class, we will listen to a song and view the lyrics. Group lyric analysis. Students will learn how to rhetorically analyze hip-hop lyrics. Depending on the time of the year, I may need to direct teach rhetorical analysis terms.
Group practice. In groups, students will practice lyric analysis on a Hip Hop song- possibly in gallery walk format
Hip Hop and culture. Read an article or watch a Ted Talk on Hip Hop and its cultural meaning. Accompanying this will be guided notes.
We will compare our notes from the article based on what we have done so far.
III. Self Assessment: How well do you understand what we are doing with Hip Hop? This reflection will ask questions using the rhetorical analysis language that we have been using so far.
IV. Comparing lyrics. Students will get some side-by-side lyrics from artists in the same culture, producing music at the same time. They will look for clues about cultural identity and determine whether they can actually learn this from music. Then they will look for claims and evidence within the songs. Students will record their findings in a graphic organizer (consider doing this on a Jamboard). Then they will write a precis about the artist and their argument. They will do this practice twice. Once in pairs and once on their own. Should the previous self-assessment indicate that they are confident in their skills, they will do both practices on their own. The precis can easily be differentiated and scaffolded.
V. Understanding the features in HipHop songs. Looking at just identity and song features, students will work in groups to examine four songs. They will create their own infographic/ poster/ padlet/ graphic organizer and arrange quotes from the songs into categories.
VI. Self-assessment and teacher-assessment. Students will reflect on their understanding of how to find both rhetorical argument and identity within a song. The teacher will review work samples.
VII. Preparing to write. The class will review some of the songs that they have studied and the claims that the class has discovered. The class with teacher guidance will turn a few claims into questions and this will be a journal prompt.
VIII. Brainstorming their own songs. Students will reflect on their identities with a Where I am From poem, a mandala (these will be created prior to the unit to prepare for the overarching theme for the semester).
A large variety of songs which reflect my student demographics.
Sparks: Spark A, Spark B, Spark C (make a You Tube Playlist, Chromebooks or phones needed)
Graphic organizers
Padlets/ Jamboards set up with the graphic organizers
A forum for lyric writing and sharing.
Review of Literature
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Education theory and scholarship continue to examine equity and ways to provide equitable educational opportunities for students of color. The examination began in the 60s but made an impactful leap forward in the 90s with Gloria Ladson-Billings’ (1995) proposal of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). CRP is a teaching approach that emphasizes the importance of understanding each student’s cultural identity and using that understanding to create meaningful learning opportunities for the student. CRP then has transformed into culturally sustaining pedagogy from Django Paris (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy or CSP seeks to foster (or sustain) linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation and revitalization (Paris et. al, 2017). These educators and researchers identified that valuing a student’s cultural identity and providing space for them to access the curriculum from what they bring to the table has many positive benefits, including performance data (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012). Indeed, Paris et. al. (2017) take a close look at schooling in a pluralistic society, which the International Baccalaureate Program also claims to do, something I explore in detail later in the review. The problem that Ladson-Billings later identified in her 2014 Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix and again in her book Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a Different Question (2021), is that teachers' attempts to engage in culturally relevant or sustaining pedagogy were superficial and ineffective. Ladson-Billings (2014) found that teachers did not take on the challenge that is truly teaching and discussing culture and identity, instead minimizing its impact by diluting the concept to safe ideals and ideals. This is not to say that they did not have good intentions, only that they didn’t address critical perspectives. However, there are studies that support the efficacy of teachers who did not resist this idea as found in several studies (Noah Asher Golden, 2017; Rosalie Fink, 2017, etc.).
Noah Asher Golden’s 2017 study, an ethnographic study with Jamahl (pseudonym), led Golden to discover how exploring intersectionality allows an understanding of culture. Using counter-storytelling and identity through positionality, he documented how Jamahl navigated the undesirable positionality of who he is and can become. Golden found that CSP allowed Jamahl the space to navigate away from negative labels and “(re)position” himself with a positive identity and understanding of what he can do (Golden, 2017, p. 365). In Golden’s findings, he describes how in order to allow students space to navigate identity and intersectionality “requires learning about individuals’ ways of meaning-making, specific strategies related to the navigation of dominant discourses, and local lived realities as part of the dialogical process of a culturally-responsive pedagogy” (p. 356). This dialogical fluidity between dominant discourses and local lived realities marks the sustaining quality of CSP. Golden’s findings may discuss this fluidity, but further research that focuses on programs that claim to allow students to fluidly consume the curriculum while applying it readily to their lives, should be considered as the status quo; students should “move” to the curriculum, not the other way around.
Allowing students to position themselves within the curriculum is considered best practice by scholars like Ladson-Billings, Paris, Alim, Golden, etc. This method provides students with a better way to engage in their learning, take agency, and understand themselves. The better understanding one has of oneself, the better one can extend that understanding to other people or cultures. Only then does schooling really start to be about learning in a pluralistic society.
The International Baccalaureate Literature Course
International Baccalaureate Program (IB) and International Mindedness (IM)
The International Baccalaureate program, also created in the 1960s, was an early aim to create a global curriculum taught and recognized internationally with the purpose of creating students who are internationally minded (Ruiz Pineda, 2020). International-minded students engage in multilingualism, have an intercultural understanding, and participate in a global economy/ world (Ruiz Pineda, 2020). There is no one definition of international mindedness, nor does IB have its own concrete definition. The program emphasizes open-mindedness, the whole person, and embracing different ways of knowing things (Barratt Hacking et al., 2018). That being said there are some criticisms of IB and its claim to international-mindedness. There are concerns that the curriculum is too “Westernized” or “Eurocentric” (Oord, 2007, p.376). Indeed, Ruiz Pineda, in his 2020 study, discusses that IB’s attempt at universalizing makes the mistake of erasing other cultural identities or voices. Ladson-Billings also cautions against this in her 2010 New Directions in Multicultural Education Complexities, Boundaries, and Critical Race Theory, that because of the West’s advancements in technology it would be easy to assert its cultural dominance in a globalized curriculum. Barratt Hacking’s study found that International Mindedness can be balanced with Local Mindedness in order to foster student identity and to value home culture. Barratt Hacking studied nine schools that were selected after a survey and panel discussion. Findings in these exemplary schools detailed that IM had many meanings. The emphasis varied from school to school on connections, respect, character building, and balancing national and international perspectives. The wide variety of IM does not support the idea that IB itself is a great program to support CSP. On the other hand, the flexibility within the program allows for CSP to be used.
The Rhetoric of Hip-Hop
In order to engage in culturally sustaining pedagogy and better fulfill the aims of “International Mindedness”, we should add linguistic analysis or the study of language. Students can better see themselves in the curriculum and therefore create meaning within their own context when they are offered a chance to bring education into their world. Rather than only offering literary analysis, we could ask students to study the texts that they use every day and examine the power structure within our society. Those texts can be music lyrics, media videos (dare I say, TikTok), social media posts, etc. This way we don’t have to ask them to be pseudo-experts, but linguistic detectives of their own spaces. Yes, they will still engage in literary analysis, but we better value the identity of the students we teach by choosing texts that mirror their culture
There is no denying the prevalence of hip-hop in young people’s lives. It is a global music genre that tells stories, not just any stories but often counter-narratives and it gives voice to the lesser heard. This is especially appealing to teenagers as they struggle to be heard on a daily basis. Thus, making hip-hop, not just a music genre but a cultural movement.
Artists not only make arguments in their songs but infuse them with cultural expression. In Ajayi and Olupona’s 2022 study, Ideology and Identity in Nigerian Hip Hop Music, on Nigerian hip-hop, Ajayi and Olupona chose five songs from recent hit music in Nigeria. Upon their critical discourse and analysis, they found clear elements of cultural identity within the songs. Many references were theist in nature, clearly developing a Christian identity as typical in parts of Nigeria. Further, they discovered Yoruba cultural ideology with frequent uses of idioms and parables as a way to condemn or satirize society. This study also makes a case for linguistic study as the sample songs included code-mixing, lexical borrowing, and slang. There is much to be learned linguistically and culturally from studying hip-hop, even though the study was limited to five songs, they serve as an example of a potentially rich endeavor.
Rosalie Fink also confirms the validity of hip-hop as a genre worthy of study in her 2017 study, Rap and Technology Teach the Art of Argument. Using a teacher research method, Fink’s study took place over a five-year period. Though her students were college students, she used her first-year composition class to implement her curriculum. In this study, she used rap as a method to teach argument writing. Students engaged in rap lyric writing in order to summarize texts, and outline their arguments She notes that “rap as a genre help[s] students deepen their understanding and review what they learned from reading” (Fink, 2017, p.46). This method of teaching argument supports many college and career readiness standards, in addition to modeling 21st Century teaching methods and skills.
Using rap as a method to teach argument writing connects with Ajayi and Olupuona’s discoveries that there is much to be studied within hip-hop or rap. In the 2021 study, If You Don’t Know, Now You Know: Utilizing a Hip-Hop Pedagogy as a Tool for Promoting Change in Students and Community, researchers Haines et al. make connections between rap and both argumentation and cultural identity. Rap often functions as a voice of the community and rappers often sign about relevant personal issues (Haines et al., 2021, p. 116). They developed three research questions and performed a qualitative study utilizing participant observation, interviews, and a collection of course artifacts. Some of the findings include students reporting that they were “more open and sensitive to people different from them as a result” of the Hip-Hop pedagogy (Haines et al., 2021, p.120). In thinking about IB’s learning outcome that students be internationally minded in order to participate in a global society, one can determine that being open and sensitive to others is a critical step in that endeavor.
The devices found in hip-hop are worthy of study. Roland Steele’s 2020 study included an after-school program in which five African American students attended an after-school hip-hop literacy program. Though Steele admits that his participant size is small, he concludes that further research into hip-hop literacy should be conducted in order to compare the efficacy of the curriculum (Steele, 2020, p.140). Indeed, the poetic devices and layers of rhetoric often found in hip-hop can contribute effectively to critical reading or critical literacy as well as any work of literary merit. In fact, further research has infiltrated its way into popular media. Now there is a Twitter handle #HipHopEd and plenty of followers who tweet their lessons using hip-hop pedagogy. Hip-hop welcomes students as they are and provides them with a place to engage. It is often a form of expression that is authentic and true to the artist’s own experiences and cultures
Studying hip-hop songs from “home cultures” can help students gain a deeper understanding of language, culture, and values. Being exposed to this kind of curriculum directly connects to each student and helps them feel seen and heard. Once they feel connected to the curriculum in this personalized way, then they can learn empathy for other people and cultures. This empathy helps to create the International Mindedness that IB aims to teach. Hip-hop has been known to break down language and cultural barriers allowing for more meaningful communication. Using Hip-hop will support their exploration of themselves, as Alim reminds us that Prophets of the City proclaimed in their song that “Knowledge of Self is gonna make us strong” (Paris et al., 2017a). Rather than ask students to pretend to be experts in writing that they are mostly unfamiliar with, I will use writing that supports the “Knowledge of Self”, that permeates their everyday lives in order to value my students and to and help them see how it is a bridge to others.
References
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Ajayi, T. M., & Olupona, O. O. (2022). Ideology and Identity in Nigerian Hip Hop Music.
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