h.

hip-hop lit:

“Hip-hop is a vehicle.”

~Talib Kweli~

"Some folks don't understand hip-hop because they don't know how to listen. The two main principles to keep in mind when listening to hip-hop are the patterns and intricacies of rhyme and what is called the flow, the way the words fit with the music or beat. Like rhyme and flow, the effects of the genre push one's ear forward" (223).

~Tracie Morris~

BookNotes

BookNotes were a method Dr. Cindy O'Donnell-Allen, Associate Professor of English at Colorado State University, used in both her E632 - Professional Concerns: Teaching & Learning in a Digital Age and E402 - Teaching Composition classes. O'Donnell-Allen assigned "jigsaw" groups where several different groups were given a different book to read over the course of approximately a month. Groups would have a conference and be required to supply BookNotes as individuals and complete a group form documenting the conference.

The image above was designed by Adam Mackie as part of a teaching demo in Dr. Cindy

O'Donnell-Allen's E402 - Teaching Composition class where the class was prompted to design

their own graffiti after reading the hip-hop text "Unconditional Love" by Tupac Shakur.

BookNotes for Marc Lamont Hill’s

BEATSRHYMES

+CLASSROOMLIFE

Book cover courtesy of Google Images

Chapters 1 – 2

The group’s method to read Beats Rhymes + Classroom Life by Marc Lamont Hill was to use a question mark, comma, and exclamation point method that was presented by O’Donnell-Allen:

(?) = A moment in the text that raised a thought provoking question

(,) = A moment in the text where I stopped to pause

(!) = A moment in the text that I felt strongly about or became excited

I paused after reading Gloria Ladson-Billings’ “Foreword.” Billings commented on Hill as a teacher:

Marc Lamont Hill distinguishes himself by not merely using hip-hop as a vehicle for study, but by making hip-hop the very object of study. Hill’s own connection to hip-hop as a defining strategy for identity development allows him to use hip-hop for exactly what teachers should use literature for – developing the thinking and expanding the worldview of learners (Hill viii).

The notion of “identity development” merits a big exclamation point! Identity development became a focal point while reading Hill's text. It supports the thinking that a teacher’s role in the classroom is not only to deliver content, but also to transform culture and be a catalyst for enacting positive change in their students both inside and outside the classroom.

Hill leads into his “Shout Outs” section with lines from Tupac Shakur’s “Dear Mama,” saying how Shakur cannot pay back his “mama” for what she has done for him. I was touched by the way Hill used similar lines to describe a mentor of his at Morehouse College saying, “I owe more to you than I could ever pay back” (xii).

Listen to above music with discretion.

Lyrics may contain explicit content.

A question that I asked myself while reading Hill’s “Preface” was – How does the way students define themselves help or hinder their education experience? The above thinking about “identity development” can be linked to this question and the notion of identity seems to be at the center of Hill’s “Hip-Hop Lit” (i.e. Hip-Hop Literature). Hill is deeply invested in “the relationship among youth, popular culture, identity, and schooling” (xviii). As teachers, how can Hill’s deep investment in “identity development” be translated into our own classrooms and how can teachers effectively contextualize identity exploration?

In reading chapters 1 – 2, I found myself frequently at pause. I paused at one point to consider my own “a priori understandings of the relationships between youth and hip-hop culture” (4). There was a point in my own experience where I was a avid listener of hip-hop music, wore hooded sweatshirts with logos of hip-hop groups, and identified myself within hip-hop culture. Hill goes on to consider how “youth use hip-hop text to negotiate particular conceptions of self and the social world” (5). In contextualizing his work in chapter 2, I was particularly drawn to the choices Hill made for the texts to use in his “Hip-Hop Lit” curriculum in The Howard High School Twilight Program. The way Hill broke the curriculum down into categories and found a way to connect these current texts to conventional literary interpretation seemed to be highly effective, thought provoking, and something I would like to use in my own secondary English classrooms.

Chapters 3 - 4

"It ain't nothing like hip-hop music ...You like it cause you choose it..."

~Method Man, Wu Tang Clan~

Exclamation Points

Hill continued to talk about “identity work” (32) in chapter 3, what constituted “real” hip-hop, and the students in his learning community at the Twilight Program in Philadelphia. Thinking about how students form their identities in the classroom, whether studying Hip-Hop Lit or another subject, remains an aspect of pedagogy I feel merits an exclamation point. Also, when Hill started chapter four with a quote by Henri Nouwen and spent the next 35 pages talking about teachers as wounded healers I knew I chose the right jigsaw book. Anyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed philosophically and metaphysically with the human condition of being wounded.

‘Save the drama, leave a comma’

I paused many times throughout reading chapters 3 - 4, however, found myself pausing in particular at the close of chapter 3. Hill used the phrase “essentialist notions of culture” (64) and I paused to think about what essentialist notions of culture I possessed as a teacher.

Questions

Where should we as educators draw the line as far as personal disclosure is concerned within the classroom?

When are times in our lives where we’ve disclosed too much in a professional setting?

When were times that we were too reserved, like perhaps in the way Hill described Mr. Colombo to be with the Twilight students?

How will we (re)negotiate ‘otherness’ in our classroom, whether it’s otherness related to race, class, gender, religion, or sexual orientation?

What does being a “wounded healer” in the educational setting mean to you?

Chapters 5 - Appendix

Hill’s chapter entitled “Bringing Back Sweet (and Not So Sweet) Memories: The Cultural Politics of Memory, Hip-Hop, and Generational Identity” was prefaced with a quote from Michel Foucault and Talib Kweli. Hill discusses the emergence of “generational identity” within what Foucault might call an “episteme.” The notion of generational identity in the context of Foucauldian “history” and hip-hop led me to many exclamation points, question marks, and commas. One exclamation: “Yes!” It makes me so happy to see Foucault in juxtaposition with Talib Kweli. A question I asked the question: “How do we as teachers embrace a student’s lived experience?” A moment I found pause was during the discussion of “historical exceptionalism” or the conversation about how generations, both young and old, may suffer from terminal uniqueness.

The remainder of the text (Chapter 6 - Appendix) discussed “Pedagogies of Hip-Hop,” “Pedagogies about Hip-Hop,” and “Pedagogies with Hip-Hop,” as well as a kind of meta-discussion on Hill’s research experience. I became troubled by Hill’s notions of “authenticity,” “realness” or “representin(g).” In any ethnographic study, such as this one, the researcher inevitably has privilege over the one he or she is studying. Hill spends ample energy justifying the merit and credibility of his research, but perhaps could have gone further into how successful and/or challenging Hip-Hop Lit was for the students he studied..