Expectations and Resistance

Here are examples of resistance and boundaries encountered by learners, community workers, and classroom educators. 

What makes Hip Hop curriculum different from other curriculum?

• My curriculum is discursive, material driven, and experiential. It involves implicit and explicit language teaching. It allows for differentiated instruction with both ESL and urban youth at different levels. 
• It provides for the building of a language community within the classroom, by having the instructor offer stories and life experiences through poetry and Hip Hop, to create a 3^rd safe space for learning and addressing the complex relationships between identity, language, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
• It doesn’t just expose learners to texts from artists or only their lyrics, instead it involves them in the experiential practices of Hip Hop in using identity, language play, dialogue, and ciphering in intercultural communications.
• It doesn’t just filter and censor their favorite artists, it seeks for them to critically analyze them in comparison with more intelligible artists and lyrics.
• It doesn’t just ask them to make standard language out of non-standard language, it asks them to code switch between them and to form poetic texts out of academic or standard language.
• It seeks to have learners create language from their aesthetic environment, using instrumentals, imagery and multimodal semiotics, which are necessary for differentiated instruction.
• It aims at the discussion between the split between Art and Commerce that occurred in Hip Hop culture, between materialistic vocalists (Rappers) and cultural workers (Emcees), in comparison with the standardization movement in education. Both of which, detach what is assessed on a test in school from their lived experience among other Hip Hop elements in a communicative manner.
• It doesn’t just ask them to respond to words on a page, instead it asks them to get to know the artists, and compare their worlds and experiences to their own in a transformative way, and to reach out and respond to their world, by having the instructor as one medium to connect those worlds. Some learners cannot read or write, yet are bright in musical and lyrical ways, outside of standard educational measures.
• It can be used to discuss contrastive rhetoric between classics and modern poetry, but it more so seeks for the learners to produce their own language elements and elicit explicit teachings of those literary elements.
• It doesn’t ask them to become Hip Hop or to cast aside their country’s slang or culture, or ask them to appropriate African American vernacular, instead it seeks to have them produce lyrical and cultural connections to the genres through their lived world experience and sociolinguistic backgrounds.
• It doesn’t just aim to fit vernaculars into an academic setting, or have learners translate vernacular into standard language, it first values their spoken and written languages and imbues the use of contrastive rhetoric to frame their differences and connections so the learner can use both.  
• It doesn’t just ask them to analyze lyrics or videos with words on the page, or focus on sentence level lexical or syntactical production in language. Instead it uses various advanced organizers as tools to build language using grammar in context, and to teach genre analysis, both of which are the most formative, cutting edge, and arguably most difficult progression needed in the 21^st century classroom. 

What if my students are not interested in the Genre of Hip Hop music?

• Plan to build a pre- and post-survey to seek musical preferences, educational and language background, family and community involvement, and language learning experience from students.
• Make time to get to know your students musical preferences and tastes. Seek out their performances and understanding of their chosen genre.
• Seek out music where Hip Hop has “crossed over” "mixed", or "sampled" in from, or to other musical genres, and build a space where you can be inclusive of their interests.
• As a basis for building the curriculum, it is important to ask them to recognize what they don't enjoy, and why, and positively challenge them to bring in certain materials, musical examples, and resources where this “blending” of genre has taken place to compliment the complex student dynamics you may encounter.

What if I have to avoid controversial, racy, or explicit language that I have encountered in much of the music?

• HYPER-MASCULINITY / PATRIARCHY /(MACHISMO) - Here is a lesson I've crafted and implemented at the middle school, high school, college, and in community spaces that carefully allows you as the educator to facilitate the experiential activity, debriefing, and visual schemata that breaks down not only the causes, but how to reconstruct the damaging language of Hypermasculinity found in most rap that some kids listen to. 
• DIFFERENTIATE - Dialoguing with learners about the connotations, inflammatory history, and misinterpretations of the loaded "N" word is taboo in standardized public classrooms. However, my experience has shown me that students, (especially Black and White students) appreciate me breaking down the differences between the "N" word ending with "a" as a transliterated and retaken term of endearment cultivated and secured by Hip Hop street culture, versus the "N" word in the colonial and political context ending with "-er". Brief discussions on the origins of words such as these, can be avoided, but why should they, when they are used everyday outside of the classroom? 
• TEACH AND LEARN FROM DISCUSSION - Artistry and musicality invokes and takes some emotion, and expletives need to be understood as replaceable when age appropriate in the classroom, but often in the genius of the art or music itself, they are irreplaceable and young learners appreciate a mature facilitated discussion from their teacher about "why" they are being used, instead of "how" they are being used. Here is the nexus of reality of life and the classroom, that students appreciate understanding, why use an expletive (even such as the "N" word (ending in "a") when it's overuse is wack! 
• PROVIDE ALTERNATIVES - One way to approach this problem is to first have a good selection of good Hip Hop with intelligible alternatives to language, and literally comparing how they explain and articulate more robust meaning and language than expletives. 
• ACTIVATE! - Another way is to challenge your learners to reword, revise, or rewrite these words into more intelligible ones, by printing out their favorite song lyrics, then providing a copy of them with blanks where keywords of the song invite them to fill in and write their own songs to make their own language art. 
• DON'T BLAME THE ARTIST OR THE CULTURE - Do not plan to use explicit language in songs for fear of repercussions from parents or administrators. But expect it to be out there, and to be listened to without parent's permission, expletives are human, they are not solely the product of Hip Hop language or culture. 
• HIGHER ORDER THINKING LANGUAGE - Whenever possible, and if the student is mature enough to feel it necessary, have them bring the words in on paper, and plan lessons substituting these words for other higher order thinking words and ideas. Always discuss this professionally, send out proper communication, and invite parents to take part in the workshop or discussion. 
• NO HATE - There is anger, fear, and danger out there, and the class must be a safe place, so regulate language so it never becomes hateful of other learners. 
• CRITICAL THINKING - Engaging students in a mature discussion about the use of aggressive or explicit  language in certain contexts and genres of Hip Hop, may be necessary for critical inquiry, but it always engages most language learners towards language awareness. 

What if I have to teach grammar, how does Hip-Hop help to teach proper grammar?

• Contemporary cutting edge theory and practice provides evidence that grammar is learned implicitly and through explicit instruction, but explicitly teaching grammar is not necessarily the most efficient way to teach language. Diane Larsen-Freeman's report Grammar and Its Teaching: Challenging the Myths offers further insight on this point. 
• Offering non-grammatical examples, and having students compare them alongside grammatical examples is an innovative way of teaching grammar. This can be done using works like "Taming of the Shrew" and other literary works that use "Olde English" or other "non-standard" vernaculars. 
• Adam Bradley's "Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop"  offers examples of how spoken word literature and Hip Hop rhymes share meter alongside each other, and rhythm in different ways. Offering non-grammatical phrases, then adding words or language elements that sequentially make these phrases more grammatical can be done to a beat or instrumental. 
• It is important to not review Hip Hop lyrics in isolation outside of their instrumental's says Bradley, because the stretching or compacting of syllables, and alterations of cadence, and syncopation are all entrusted to unique patterns formed by the artist that cannot be translated directly over to literary poetry. Rhythmic beats, instrumentals, or even a finger-snapping metronome are needed to compliment Hip Hop poetry and lyrics, while spoken word, or literary poetry often does not have these embedded in the text on the page.  

What if my administrators or my student's parents are very apprehensive about Hip Hop in the classroom or learning environment? 

Educate them! 

• Hip Hop is American subculture currently evolving globally, as a cultural, and linguistically charged practice. Involving literacy, language, and identities that are permeably “flowing” around the world, (Pennycook, 2007a). Student's identities and learning should come into this discussion in answering this question. 
• Successful educators in Hip Hop, English, and Arts and Humanities should abide by the motto for students, that “if you don’t tell your story then someone else will”, and that it’s all about leading them to the understanding that their words and language, have power.
• Start with an identity poem (where they are from), which expands and connects the concepts, “I am from, I am at, I am going” poem, and this kind of activity ideally holds implications for use of the ‘personal voice’ in academic writing.
• Researching and recording strategies for facilitating dialogue within three very different dynamic groups for intercultural communication. 1) Students from mostly middle-class background, 2) Low SES consisting mostly of one minority population (e.g. Native American, Hispanic, Filipino, Black, etc.) and, 3) multicultural and multilingual student populations, which are very common for most schools, communities, and colleges.
• Plan on using new and genuine ‘trust building’ and ‘getting to know you’ activities, during the first few weeks. Building trust will revolve around dialogue about love, dreams, hormones, and any other common things, and even disparities in their experiences, all as part of their development. 

Saucedo (2012) holds that “the human culture is a culture of building towards humanity that is bigger than Hip Hop and bigger than the classroom, and is meant to guide them further into lifelong learning”. He continues in the example that, “Teachers don’t put themselves into positions they are not used to, yet they expect their students to, and that true pedagogy is not about control, yet, we diminish it only to be about classroom management”.

What if it is just not working like regular curriculum?

• They you shouldn't teach it like "regular" curriculum. Do not plan to teach English in a controlled front-loaded explicit fashion, but rather more from an implicitly rear-loaded fashion. This may take more time. Focus on songwriting as the everyday goal in building language for teaching its components, and however those components show themselves. Here are some online tools: SongCraft, LilacWriter, HookPad, and NoteFlight. 
  
• I then plan to offer instruction, always aiming for the culminating practice of exploring language play, and language use, onto the goal of songwriting or other lyrical aspects of which you wish to connect your lesson and subject. 
• Storytelling becomes a powerful piece, as it is very common experience of introspection, teaching of morals, and interpersonal communication with Hip Hop, and found through listening to any music, and analyzing lyrics, then dialoguing. 
• Start with Hip Hop music from this storytelling genre aimed at telling tales of morality, and  start with more basic, and move onto more complex language use and language play-- in a positive fashion.