On today's podcast, Dr. Edmund Adjapong, author of Teach Like an MC, sits down with his mentor, Dr. Chris Emdin, to talk about the power of hip-hop pedagogy, an approach to teaching that encourages educators to gain authentic understanding of their students' cultures and develop their own critical consciousness, while bringing hip-hop's creative elements into their teaching.
As Edmund writes in Teach Like an MC, Chris's impact on Edmund's work began in a ninth-grade physics class when Dr. Emdin taught through hip-hop. Dr. Chris Emdin writes the afterword to Teach Like an MC, and is writing the forthcoming series with Heinemann, Don't Worry, Just Teach.
Transcript
Brett:
How do we grow student engagement and be more responsive in our teaching practice? Asset-based and culturally competent pedagogies are a way to bring in a student's lived experiences and build more interest-based appeal that can help make our teaching more meaningful to students.
I'm Brett from Heinemann. On today's podcast, Dr. Edmund Adjapong, author of Teach Like an MC, sits down with his mentor, Dr. Chris Emdin, to talk about the power of hip-hop pedagogy, an approach to teaching that encourages educators to gain authentic understanding of their students' cultures and develop their own critical consciousness, while bringing hip-hop's creative elements into their teaching.
As Edmund writes in Teach Like an MC, Chris's impact on Edmund's work began in a ninth-grade physics class when Dr. Emdin taught through hip-hop. Dr. Chris Emdin writes the afterword to Teach Like an MC, and is writing the forthcoming series with Heinemann, Don't Worry, Just Teach.
Dr. Edmund Adjapong is the director of Hip-Hop Culture Equity at Excellence Academy, and an associate professor in the educational studies department at Seton Hall University. A former middle school science teacher in New York City public schools, Edmund is also the founding editor for the Journal of Hip-Hop Education. Chris is the Maxine Green Chair for Distinguished Contributors to Education and Professor of Science and Education at Teachers College at Columbia University. Here's part one of this conversation. Dr. Emdin leads us off.
Dr. Emdin:
Hip-hop education as an area of study, as a field of study has been sort of steadily growing over the course of the last decade, and we've had a lot of work that keeps focusing around the same themes, which is like, how do you use rap lyrics in the classroom? And I think this work takes that concept to a next level. It really showcases the elements of the culture. It tells story and narrative, ways to actually implement the practice. It gives you philosophy, it gives you pedagogy, it gives you practice, it gives you spots for reflection. And so, what are you most excited about with it being out in the world?
Dr. Adjapong:
I'm excited being done with the labor of the book. But I'm excited for... I'm excited for teachers to get their hands on it, and I'm excited to see what they do with it, how they grapple with it, what challenge they have with some of the content in it. I think what I'm most excited is what students get to experience as a result of the book.
Dr. Emdin:
I've always loved the idea of we write books for teachers, but what matters most to us is students, and I think this is the kind of book where I think a student, I could see a student picking this up and reading it. It has the aesthetics, the cover. The quotes are really large. And I think that teachers who put this book in the hands of their students, so that students can understand how hip-hop connects to teaching. Is it a level of connection that most folks wouldn't expect? What do you think about that? What do you think about the fact that students might actually be reading this thing?
Dr. Adjapong:
That's exciting, too. You know what I mean? We think about looking across this country and across New York state, we're doing like CTE programs and technical education, so they have education tracks. So part of that work is how do we encourage and excite young people to become educators and move towards education and also pick up this book? So if you have high school students who want to be teachers in the future, or even students who are just curious around pedagogy, what teaching should look like. When I was a student in high school, I'd really never thought about what was the most appropriate and most effective way of being taught was. I just realized I was often disengaged in school, and I didn't really consider, oh, I can be engaged in this space, because I had so many years of experiences of not being engaged. I just thought that was the status quo. And I think it's really important for young people to see, no, there are opportunities where you can see yourself, your culture, the things that you engage with outside of school spaces, in school spaces. And I think ultimately, you deserve that. How do we get young people to know that, that they deserve to be taught in a way that supports them, that aligns with their values, their cultures, the things that they engage with in and outside of school spaces.
Dr. Emdin:
What I love about what you just said, and also what I love about what the book could do is just, in an era where people are like, hip-hop is not as, what it was, or hip-hop is not this, and it's like, listen, we just had in the last month a hip-hop moment that captured the imagination of literally the entire world. People in industry, people on Saturday Night Live, people in the news, people in politics and every endeavor are all paying attention to this Kendrick-Drake battle. Which just reminds us of the ways that hip-hop captures the imagination of the public. And I think what this book offers is a way for you to be able to allow hip-hop to capture the imagination of young people around their learning. Talk to us a little bit about where hip-hop is, and this culture moment that we're in hip-hop culture, and why this book is so timely, given that.
Dr. Adjapong:
I think this book is timely in the sense of when we think about where hip-hop is, I think hip-hop, obviously commercialized, and there's a lot of consumer-based hip-hop in the sense of we're doing things for clicks, we're doing things for bait. And that's where a lot of the arguments come, like, what is hip-hop, or hip-hop is not the same as it used to be.
My argument is hip-hop is always what it is, and it will always be what it was, in the sense that at its core, hip-hop is an opportunity for historically marginalized groups to share their perspectives, to critique social values and norms, in particular society that in the sense that continues to oppress folks. And that's what we saw with the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl performance.
In this book, I really push educators and just folks in general. Because this book is for teachers, but it's for just folks who want to engage in hip-hop, folks who see themselves a part of community. I try to do a dive into all the elements in history. But I want folks to really know that hip-hop at its core is about Black liberation at its core, and it will always be about Black liberation, regardless of how it's packaged, how it's consumed.
Dr. Emdin:
What's beautiful about that is this idea that Black liberation is beneficial to everybody, particularly in the sociopolitical climate that we're in, where we are hearing about extracting books from schools, and we're banning them. Not just extracting them, we're banning them. Or we're banning the use of certain words or certain phrases. This idea that even in a climate that is leading with that, those who know how to teach understand that we need all young folks to feel free, and that this book offers us an opportunity to do that. I just think, it is just magical, man, timing-wise.
Dr. Adjapong:
To that too, people argue hip-hop is for the Black students, it's for the students in inner cities. Hip-hop's for everybody.
Dr. Emdin:
Facts.
Dr. Adjapong:
Everybody, all young people, I would argue older people, everybody has some type of connection to hip-hop. Even my mom, who's an immigrant from Ghana, West Africa, has a connection to hip-hop, right? Maybe not consciously. But I saw Busta Rhymes on the Walmart commercial. Wiz Khalifa selling Oreos. The way we use hip-hop in marketing in society, there's always a connection. My mom hums Beyonce songs. I'm like, "Do you know what you're doing consciously?" And it's really important for us to recognize because of how prevalent hip-hop is within our society, we all have a connection to hip-hop, but it's really up to us how we want to critique and interrogate that connection. And so in the book, I talk about, are you a hip-hop spectator? Are you a participant? Are you a hip-hop connoisseur? And then around your identity, arguing that everybody has some type of connection to hip-hop.
Dr. Emdin:
I love that, and that there's multiple entry points for everyone,
Dr. Adjapong:
Right, right. And it's a spectrum. So sometimes you'd be like, yo, I'm feeling like a connoisseur today. I'm really invested. I know what's going on. Or maybe I'm not feeling like super connoisseur. I'm just a participant. I'm engaging. I like to listen to hip-hop. It hypes me up. Or I'm a spectator. I see hip-hop on the bounds or the periphery of things, and I'm just watching the game.
Dr. Emdin:
And that's it, but either way, I'm invested.
Dr. Adjapong:
Exactly. You have some type of connection to it. And it's important for us to recognize that, because when we don't recognize our personal connection to hip-hop, it's easy to feed into the stereotypes that society has of hip-hop, and the stereotype that society has of hip-hop is because hip-hop is a Black cultural art form. The stereotypes of hip-hop being misogynistic, homophobic. And hip-hop is those things to a certain extent, but it's not only those things. And I make the argument that American society is all those things as well.
Dr. Emdin:
As well.
Dr. Adjapong:
And we don't frame ourselves through those things alone.
Dr. Emdin:
And we don't critique American society in the same way.
Dr. Adjapong:
And that's not necessarily fair.
Dr. Emdin:
We recognize this existence. We try and work to do better and be better, but we don't dismiss ourselves because of those aspects of who we are.
Dr. Adjapong:
Right, right.
Dr. Emdin:
Yeah. I mean, I dig that about the text. I'll tell you what I'm super excited about as well, as we give birth to this Don't Worry, Just Teach book series, and as I think about the series, I'm always thinking to myself, I don't want this collection of books to be just another set of education books, but as books that have soul, that have heart, that teachers can pick up and make meaning out of, that they'll learn something that they've never done before, and that is palatable and consumable. And I'm so proud that this is the book that leads that off, because in many ways it exemplifies what the vision is for that book series. Can you talk about that concept, that concept of Don't Worry, Just Teach? At the end of the day, the world is going to be crazy. Folks might be in power who love you, and they may be in power who hate you. They might want to ban the Department of Education. They might want to keep it up. They might want to flip it or turn it and twist it, but at the end of the day, as pedagogues, our work is to just teach. Talk about that phrase as it relates to this work.
Dr. Adjapong:
Man, Don't Worry, Just Teach. Listen, in the text, I talk about the Black experience within America from slavery up until now. And there are many points even today, we're noticing historically society, government in particular does not really support the aspirations of Black folks, and there are many times where our government and our society has offered promises, 40 acres and a mule, equitable schools, equitable curriculum, and at many points, those promises have not been fulfilled. So Don't Worry, Just Teach is like, listen, we can't expect anybody to come and save us. The world is often and always going to be on fire. What's different from now in 1960, when we're pushing towards Civil Rights, the integration of schools and public spaces? And at the end of the day, the babies need us. The young people need us. And as adults in these spaces, as facilitators, as educators, how do we lead in a sense where we can model what it means to navigate in a world where folks are often oppressed, pushed to the margins of society, when it doesn't always have to be like that.
Dr. Emdin:
It doesn't have to be that way. Good teaching, it saves the souls of folks who exist in a world that's on fire. Everything else burns down, but your soul is left intact when you have an interaction with a good teacher, or if you have an interaction with a kind of book or text that shows you how to survive the fires in the world, which I think is what this book does. I think this book is, it's a fire retardant in a world that's up in flames, and if you wrap yourself around it, you will survive the flames.
Dr. Adjapong:
And you got to be intentional about knowing that you have that blanket wrap yourself with, right?
Dr. Emdin:
Right, because it could be sitting right there and you're like, well, it's great to hang on my wall, but we want you to embrace this thing and hold onto this thing.
Dr. Adjapong:
Exactly, and know its utility, right? Some people see that, oh, there's a fire blanket. It's just there. Break in case of emergencies. We're in an emergency right now. Pick it up.
When I think about this text and the intention of this text, a lot of it comes from my personal experiences and things that I love and I care about. But then what I realized as a practitioner, I know that we can't always come to this work from solely our personal experiences. So the research of this book has been super important. I mean, I remember it started, the idea and the concept of hip-hop pedagogy has come from when I was in my doctoral program with you at TC, but also my practice as a sixth grade science teacher, and realizing that my kids love hip-hop, but it just can't be... We can't implement it in a very superficial way. So that really got me thinking, what does a hip-hop informed pedagogy look like? And what I love about this text and about this work in particular is that my intention is to, I want to pay homage to the culture.
Dr. Emdin:
Culture. Yeah.
Dr. Adjapong:
It's such a beautiful culture, brilliant culture, and paying homage to the culture and bringing it into educational spaces, because we can use hip-hop and marketing, we can use hip-hop and media, we could use hip-hop in all these other domains, but when it comes to teaching and learning, there's this perception that, no, it's not good enough for this space. And my argument is, it's absolutely necessary for this space.
Dr. Emdin:
I mean, I'm saying, you've done a beautiful job not just representing and reflecting the culture, but also offering the field something that could help teachers teach better. I want to hear your thoughts on this, and the fact that you got an endorsement in the forward from the glorious Gloria Ladson-Billings.
Dr. Adjapong:
The OG.
Dr. Emdin:
What was that like to have her write the forward and to have her kind of endorsement and support of not just the book, but the vision behind the book? I'd love to hear how you think and feel about that.
Dr. Adjapong:
It's such an honor. Gloria has always been a big supporter of our work, and I think it's such a beautiful thing for somebody who comes from the space of culturally relevant pedagogy and this idea of how do we support Black youth, and how do we support the achievement of Black youth? And I love how Gloria, as an older scholar, can see the value and the importance of this work, because we recognize that, listen, it's always about meeting the students where they are. And hip-hop takes on different shapes and faces within spaces. Everybody has a different connection to hip-hop. So the difficult part about this text is like, okay, find your connection, and then also find your students' connections. How do you bring those?
Dr. Emdin:
How do you merge?
Dr. Adjapong:
How do you merge those two, right? Because I could be like, yo, I grew up on Talib and Black Star, and I hate what's going on now. But if you engage in that way with your students who may not engage with Black Star in the same way as you, then there might be a disconnect.
Dr. Emdin:
But that's what I dig. I dig a lot the almost universality of hip-hop as it comes across in the text. So it's like, yo, if you're a purist, you're going to appreciate the references and the stories. If you're a novice, you're going to appreciate the information.
Dr. Adjapong:
That was a big part of my work, and that was probably one of the pieces I struggled with the most, where it's like, listen, Jay-Z's my favorite artist. Love Jay-Z. I think he's the best rapper of all time, but that's me. I remember when I went to school and I started teaching, I was like, "I love Jay-Z." Like, "Who?" And I was like, "Yo, it is Biggie's birthday, it's Biggie Day. We're going to listen to Biggie." "What?" Sixth grade students, right? This is young students who are probably 11 or 12 years old, before they have an opportunity to go out into the world and engage in their own sensibilities around hip-hop music and culture. So they're really focused on prevalent and prominent artists.
But the work has been about, okay, if we take a step back and interrogate this culture as a culture. So I like to look at hip-hop through its sensibilities and through its creative elements. Let's remove the artists and our personal connections to these people.
Dr. Emdin:
And let's talk about the elements.
Dr. Adjapong:
Let's focus on the elements. At its core, hip-hop is about the MC, the DJ, the graffiti artists, the break dancer, and knowledge of self, the creative elements, which are multimodal. So I try to look at the, how can we bring in these elements that young people engage in subconsciously, or even consciously, outside of school spaces, while they're interacting with hip-hop culture? And how do we bring in that multimodality into teaching?
Dr. Emdin:
It's revolutionary just to name the elements as multimodal. I think people oftentimes relegate the complex aspects of the culture to just a thing they do, and not recognizing that, not only that it has inherent academic and intellectual value, but that in hip-hop is a model for teaching. And I think that's what you kind of got across with censoring the elements. It's like, okay, as an MC, how do you teach an MC? How do you teach a B-boy? What elements of pedagogy can you pull forth from what these folks already do? And I think that sets another set of thinking in motion.
Dr. Adjapong:
It does.
Dr. Emdin:
You know what I mean?
Dr. Adjapong:
And that's the goal. And I had a conversation with somebody the other day, and they were like, "Well, you know..." I was making, I make the argument that, for example, graffiti art, when we leverage graffiti art, it's about the visual arts aspect. How do we get engaging and allow students to create and make sense of the concepts that we want to teach them? ELA, science, math classes. Through visual arts, right?
Dr. Emdin:
That's right.
Dr. Adjapong:
Because a lot of research that demonstrates when students are able to draw concepts in their own way and their own articulation of those concepts, they get a deeper understanding of the content. So boom, we could remove graffiti art from that conceptualization and just have the kids engaged in visual arts. But what's important for me to bring in the graffiti piece is that, number one, this work is informed by the graffiti piece, right?
Dr. Emdin:
Absolutely.
Dr. Adjapong:
And the graffiti, there's brilliance in graffiti art. Also, how do we take a step back and interrogate what graffiti art is? Young people wanting to captivate and make sense of their communities. Gentrification. I don't see myself here anymore. People are being pushed out.
Dr. Emdin:
Making my mark in the world.
Dr. Adjapong:
Yeah, right. But also the nuance and the genius and the brilliance around, I'm doing a mural. My mural can be about a social issue. It could just be my name. But the freedom and creativity that captures the minds of young people or the folks who are engaging in graffiti art. So it's so leveled in nuance. The conversation I was having with folks. Well, if the students are not engaging in "graffiti art" in the same way that hip-hop is engaging in graffiti art, is that the hip-hop pedagogy?
Dr. Emdin:
Absolutely.
Dr. Adjapong:
And I'm like, it is, right?
Dr. Emdin:
Absolutely, yeah.
Dr. Adjapong:
So for example, the breaking. I say breaking is kinesthetic. How do we get young people to move in the classroom in relationship to the content and the concept they're learning? Young people are not, I don't see young people necessarily "break dancing" in the class, in relationship to content. It might be a hip-hop studies class and that will be dope, but we can't...
Dr. Emdin:
But in any other content area, are you seeing that?
Dr. Adjapong:
Right.
Dr. Emdin:
And it's like, well, you should be.
Dr. Adjapong:
Exactly. So the piece is that if it's not exactly the hip-hop element, is it hip-hop pedagogy? I'm like, absolutely, right? As to how it's informed.
Dr. Emdin:
Because it's informed by the element.
Dr. Adjapong:
Right.
Dr. Emdin:
It's rooted in the element. And ultimately, ideally, if you use the element, you have another sort of set of boundaries to which you look at it. So if I'm like, just kinesthetic learning, from where? Hip-hop gives us exemplars. I mean, your book, when you introduce each element, you're like, okay, this is what the element is, and here's an example of what that element looks like, and here's a person who's utilized it in this way, and then here's how you can do it in your classroom. That level of nuance and the articulation of the implementation of the project pedagogically is like, you know what I mean? That's the next level. And I think what you're offering us here is also a new model for how we articulate educational frameworks. You're literally offering the field an exemplar of what it can look like to take an arena of study and then connect that to classroom teaching and learning. I don't know if you know that you pulled that off in this book, but you've also done that as well.
Dr. Adjapong:
Yeah. Listen, this book has been... I tell people, this is my baby. I've been writing this book for eight years now, and I think initially it took on an iteration of just being an academic text. I'm like, no, it needs to be something that can be tangible for teachers, palatable for teachers, which is why I really want to be thoughtful about how it looks, because I want people to be attracted to it. I want young people to be like, oh, what's going on? One of characters is wearing Chrome Heart jeans. And it's just like, how do we just make this relevant? And not just for today, but for a long period of time. For folks just to be like, wow, this looks really good, but when I dig into it, the content, it makes sense and it speaks to me.
And I think the other piece is, it's okay to struggle with some of the content. And I tell folks... Folks have this idea that, oh, I grew up listening to hip-hop, and of course I have a favorite artist, so I'm an expert.
Dr. Emdin:
That means I can do this.
Dr. Adjapong:
Right. You're like, nah. I'm like, no. Even myself, I'm still making sense of things. And I think that's the beauty of hip-hop, is that it's a culture that's always growing, and it's ever-growing and evolving. And it requires us as folks, as participants of the culture, to take a step back and interrogate our positionality within it. And I think it's the same for teachers. As an educator, we talk about Maxine Greene's Becoming, and I love that framing of like, listen-
Dr. Emdin:
I was just thinking that.
Dr. Adjapong:
We never arrive anywhere.
Dr. Emdin:
That's right.
Dr. Adjapong:
And I think it's the same for teachers. As an educator, if you think you've been here for 10 years and you got it done and down packed, wait until that next group of kids who grew up...
Dr. Emdin:
Be prepared to fail next year.
Dr. Adjapong:
Yeah. Come on. Young people are engaging in the world very differently, and they're showing up in our classrooms differently. As an educator who has been teaching for 10-plus years now, I'm also seeing that myself, right? I'm seeing my interactions with my students at the higher ed level. It's different than what it was five years ago. And it's okay. It doesn't mean that I take a step back. It doesn't mean that I give up. It doesn't mean that I quit. It just means that I'm more intentional about how I think...
Dr. Emdin:
I pick up new techniques.
Dr. Adjapong:
Yeah, how I think to engage my students. And I think it's important for educators to realize that, because what happens is educators keep doing the same thing and the same thing and the same thing, and they keep bumping their heads against the wall.
Dr. Emdin:
Variations of the same broken practice.
Dr. Adjapong:
Right, and they keep getting frustrated. And I totally understand the frustrations. Keep doing the same thing within the system, and you don't get anywhere, it could be frustrating, right? So how do you pick up different practices, different tools? And about the practices and techniques in this book, they also are flexible to evolve with the culture as well. And the core concept of this text is like, yo, listen, who are your students? How do you meet them where they are? How do you connect with them to give them the best education possible, to be the most effective teacher for this group of students in front of you? Next year, it might look different. In five years, it definitely will look different.
Dr. Emdin:
And hip-hop is offering you the strategies, the techniques, the philosophy, and the framing to be able to get that done.
Dr. Adjapong:
Absolutely.
Brett:
Our thanks to both Dr. Adjapong and Dr. Emdin for this conversation. This is only part one. Stay tuned for part two of this conversation in the next episode of the Heinemann podcast. And you can learn more about Teach Like an MC from Edmund Adjapong on Heinemann.com, where you can check out a sample chapter and more.
Thanks for listening to the Heinemann podcast. Be sure to check out Heinemann.com for more information, and be sure to check out blog.heinemann.com for a full transcript of our conversation.
About the Author
Dr. Adjapong is Director of the Hip-Hop Culture, Equity, and Excellence Academy and an Associate Professor in the Educational Studies Department at Seton Hall University. A former middle school science teacher in New York City Public Schools, he is also the founding editor for the Journal of Hip-Hop Education and editor of the #HipHopEd Compilation Book Series. Edmund is a native of the Bronx, New York.
Dr. Emdin holds a Ph.D in Urban Education with a concentration in Mathematics, Science, and Technology; Masters degrees in both Natural Sciences and Education and Bachelors degrees in Physical Anthropology, Biology, and Chemistry.
He is the creator of the #HipHopEd social media movement, Science Genius BATTLES and Collider Classroom. He has been named one of the 27 people bridging divides in the United States by Time magazine and the Root 100 list of most influential African Americans.
He is the author of numerous award winning works including the award-winning, Urban Science Education for the Hip-hop Generation and the New York Times bestseller, For White Folks Who Teach In the Hood and the Rest of Ya’ll too. His latest books are Ratchetdemic: Reimagining Academic Excellence and STEM STEAM Make Dream.
