Teaching Hip Hop Culture
Two of the nation's leading hip hop scholars put forward thoughtful and innovative approaches to transforming education.
About Breakbeat Pedagogy:
Breakbeat Pedagogy provides a groundbreaking framework for the inclusion of Hip Hop culture in schools. Working from the perspective of a classroom teacher, Mooney reflects on the story of Word Up!, a Hip Hop and spoken word poetry event that began with students in a New Jersey high school, making the case for a pedagogy with the potential to transform urban schools and the way we think about them. This is essential reading for any teacher committed to social justice and culturally responsive education.
About For White Folks Who Teach In The Hood...And The Rest of Y'all Too:
Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education. Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America, award-winning educator Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools. He begins by taking to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student's culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin shows how by implementing the Seven C's of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education. Lively, accessible, and revelatory, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y all Too is the much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better.
Brian Mooney
Brian Mooney is an educator, scholar, and author who explores the intersections of hip hop, spoken word, literacy, and urban education. He is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University and teaches high school in New Jersey. Brian’s work has been featured by The New York Times, NBC, Rolling Stone, NPR, SiriusXM, MTV, and others. He is the author of Breakbeat Pedagogy: Hip Hop and Spoken Word Beyond the Classroom Walls.
Chris Emdin
Dr. Christopher Emdin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University; where he also serves as Director of Science Education at the Center for Health Equity and Urban Science Education. He is also the Associate Director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an alumni fellow at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, and currently serves as Minorities in Energy Ambassador for the U.S. Department of Energy and the STEAM Ambassador for the U.S. Department of State.
Dr. Emdin is a social critic, public intellectual and science advocate whose commentary on issues of race, culture, inequality and education have appeared in dozens of influential periodicals including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. 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 Administration, and Bachelors degrees in Physical Anthropology, Biology, and Chemistry. He is the creator of the #HipHopEd social media movement, and a much sought-after public speaker on a number of topics that include hip-hop education, STEM education, politics, race, class, diversity, and youth empowerment. He is also an advisor to numerous international organizations, school districts, and schools where he delivers speeches, and holds workshops/ professional development sessions for students, teachers, policy makers, and other education stakeholders within the public and private sector. Dr. Emdin provides regular commentary on Al Jazeera and the Huffington Post; where he writes the Emdin 5 series. He is the author of the award winning book, Urban Science Education for the Hip-hop Generation and For White Folks Who Teach In the Hood and the Rest of Ya’ll Too, which is currently on the New York Times best sellers list.