About Me

What's up World?

I am Alex Templeton, and through my personal and professional life, both figurative and literally speaking, Hip Hop helped me and many others craft and learn through language. My fields are multi-lingual transliteration, transformative leadership, sociological and critical pedagogy, and ethnic studies

Kevvy Kevv the Artists y Yo

My Educational Background is comprised of T.eaching E.nglish to S.peakers of O.ther
L.anguages (TESOL); My previous Masters's Degree is in Educational Leadership - Higher Education with a emphasis, experience, and a thesis on transitioning minority student retention and development. I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education: Social Sciences, with an endorsement in Special Education K-12 from the University of Las Vegas, Nevada.

My Journey

My first encounter with Hip Hop & literacy was when I was in the fourth grade. I used to to listen to the "Breakin" tape soundtrack from the movie, and write down words I liked, I knew, and wanted to learn.

I would take the music, and the words, to McNear Elementary, where I attended, and my friends on the playground and I tried to break-dance. They all happened to be multilingual peers of mine that were new to not only the neighborhood, but new to the country. Hip Hop helped me cross cultural and language boundaries within school.

My teacher at the time, observing our interactions on the playground, and my writing and words in class, eventually asked me if I would like to put on a performance with my friends. I accepted, and we put on a great show right inside of the classroom for our peers! I was mostly "popping" (a form of urban dancing I learned that did not require a lot of space or ground work), and then we wrote our words we learned about Hip Hop on the board and talked about them a bit after.

My second encounter as I was growing up was when I would be taking notes from school and home, and using those notes to write poems and raps about my environment, both within school and outside of it. Many of my school friends were multilingual, from African, Hispanic, Southeast Asian, and European backgrounds, so we would learn new words and phrases in different languages through writing, joking, and rhyming together.

In college, I became a student leader and activist, but not until I was first known as a well-versed poet, and spoken word performer, and a host for cultural variety shows that emphasized the power of language and community.

Throughout college, I also continued to record my musical works, and saved many minds and probably a few lives of marginalized students and neighbors that fell through the cracks of the educational and collegiate systems.

Forming often a mediated space to talk and offer guidance when making songs is required with learners from all backgrounds, much like I did with the teens within my Master's at CHOP's Teen Club.

People's circumstances become their voice, which in turn, help them to rise above their circumstances through and within their voice. This is an example of how multilingual standard and non-standard language, poetic language elements, identity, transliteration, and self-reflection, can all be intertwined within music and language.

Depicted below is a workshop training I conducted to have educators form a found poem with the use of standard and non-standard English and Spanish within "transliteration":

Below is a sample of more advanced language use in rhyming, that integrates words and phrases from a corpus (script) (i.e. word bank). I am currently working on pieces for lower level language learners integrating music, audio, and video tracks with texts on screen that can be focused on language components and grammar in context.

Why this project for this approach to teaching language?

Well, besides my experience as a language learner, artist, and teacher, as a student services professional I found many of my students of many ages could understand, interpret and produce academic texts from their studies, by forging them into different forms of figurative language. Thus, while seeking to justify the poetic and the Hip Hop generation inclusive as scholars in academia, I became interested in how I learned, as well as how others form and interpret semiotic language could learn through this new literacy.

Also, John Dewey, a profound influence on our educational system in society, noted that we must continue to reevaluate how our schools are preparing, connecting, and cultivating the relationships between the community and our educational institutions. So, in the spirit of Deweyan progressivism, I made it a point of practice to befriend others who were likeminded about Hip Hop, education, and to cross cultural boundaries within Hip Hop and education, to really get a feel for what Dewey meant, and how this cultural art form and lifestyle could be useful to teach. My Teaching Philosophy can be found linked here