me and my shorties: teaching a rap-writing class to 5th graders.

Will Smith/Fresh Prince

Teach them Gamelan monkey chants instead!

Beasties?

Biz Markie!

Why would you bother? Moreover, why would you need to? The marketplace and popular culture in general is already saturated with it.

Buck 65

K-os is also mostly curse-free.

Ehh, it's a severly underfunded urban school, and there's no library (gymnasium, playground, health class, etc., etc.,) so the schoolwork has been rolled back to little more than a basic reading/arithmatic/physical sciences program. The average literacy grade for my 5th graders hovers somewhere around a C-/D+ since the students are largely bilingual (and Mass. has outlawed bilingual ed.) and the reading material is slim and extraordinarily inapplicable. I just had to read Charlotte's Web and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eveningto a group of children that have (with few exceptions) never left the Boston city limits, let alone seen a pig or horse.

A significant portion of my kids are victims of criminal neglect, often coupled with a full battery of prosecutable parental abuses, and as a result they're disrespectful, violent, and sneaky. The half-hour literacy class I instruct is a total joke for the reasons I've already mentioned... the only thing they're interested in (besides Beyblades, Yu Gi Oh, and Xbox) is rap. And they will only respect / relate with adults who can indulge their rather narrow interests.

So I'm using my rap class as a halfway-point to teaching poetry, (that's what I tell the administration), and because I think it's 'cool' (that's what I tell the students), and because it's the only way I can cultivate in them any appreciation of written language at all (that's what I tell myself). It's taught as an extra-curricular activity, and it seems to be pretty popular. Many of my students are absolute academic failures, so their participation in an after-school is hugely noteworthy. As is, frequently, their talent.

My brother works with similar kids, I think a year or two younger though. He reads Roald Dahl to them and they seem to like it.

Nas maybe

The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip Hop & the Poetry of a New Generation
(includes ilm's own saul williams!)

THERE ARE RAP WRITING CLASSES OMG????

I know a few people that would do well to enroll.

Jer, do they call you Mr. Coombs? Also, is your life "The Mighty Ducks"?

No, it's "Stand and Deliver."

Substituting rap for calculus, obv.

heh... it's closer to shades of welcome back, kotter. they like to remind me that I'm 'cold, yo' and it's been said so frequently that one day I snapped and told them that i was - quoting here - the friggin' king of alaska. so i'm either Mr. Coombs or King of Alaska. and two kids called me WCD (a.k.a. What-up Coombs', Dog?) whick morphed into WMD. And that's caught on with some of them, too.

Oh ok, read your long post now. OK, this'll sound corny, but

a) go along with them to start with,

b) promise hidden world of rhyming and punning opportunities if they persevere into world of us interlectulars,

c) be a moran and show them periodic system (laffs from kids)

d) find lots of excellent rhymes for elements*:

boron -- moron
carbon -- starvin'
neon -- peein'
xenon -- keen on / lean on
niobium -- I'll Asia and Kobe 'em [not safe for school])

e) Make awards for best (i) single element rhyme, (ii) most elements included regardless of quality, (iii) best overall.

Ah, what do I know.

My point is, introduce constraints, to focus mind of ver kids. And us ver adults.

*) Not strictly necessary, since part of assignment. Yes.

wow. I can't really think of an appropriate Tribe song. Excursions, maybe? I think these are mostly appropriate in language/content (not necessarily attitude), though some (like De La) might be too advanced for even the smartest of 5th graders:

Run D.M.C. - "Rock Box," "You Talk Too Much," "It's Like That," "Christmas in Hollis"
BDP - "You Must Learn," "Why Is That?"
Eric B and Rakim - "I Know You Got Soul"
P.E. - "Bring the Noise," "Rebel Without a Pause," "Brothers Gonna Work It Out"
Downtown Science - "Radioactive," "This is a Visit," "Down To a Science," "Natural People"
De La Soul - "Tread Water," "Plug Tunin"
Beastie Boys - "Remote Control," "Intergalactic," "Bodhisattva Vow," "Flowin Prose"

"niobium -- I'll Asia and Kobe 'em"

Let them fuck me?????

All Jeremy's reasons upthread are spot on. I wouldn't even look at this as any kind of compromise either.

I've used Tupac and Outkast in class before as tie-ins to literture but not as a segue into writing. i'd love to hear more as you go on with this.

I think using BDP and public enemy are excellent. Expose them to strong, positive lyrics early on.

Throw in some Tupac ("Dear Mama" is a good one. I paired it with Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" in a lesson.)

one writing exercise I did with our drop-out kiddos that they enjoyed was using imagery. I found examples from rap lyrics and they came up with some good things like: My spinners spin so fast you'll think I was riding on tornadoes. (or something like that.)

Jeremy's doing a good job with lesson plans like these b/c ANYTHING that can engage them is pure success.

neon -- peon
niobium - i know he's dumb

I agree, myself
having used Jungle Brothers
in social studies;

good job Jeremy
for being down with your kids,
so crazy it works!

but don't stop with "rap"--
advertisements, movie quotes,
sports stuff, it's all good

or haiku!

Were the Capulets East Coast or West Coast?

I've never heard "neon" pronounced such that it rhymes with "peein'"

a lot of the best rap is really personal - you could encourage them to do raps about their families or their nighborhood? and then you could show them some old dead poets who did the same thing.

more De La - "Potholes in My Lawn," "Pass the Plugs"

Young MC

My best friend Harry, has a brother Larry, in five days from now he's gonna marry!

you think "Bust A Move" won't get attila in trouble?

jeremy I forget where you are (chicago? boston?) but you might want to see if a radio station or local label might want to help you out.

See if they'll let some of the best raps be performed on air at the end of the course. could further motivate the kids. A community station or college station would probably be down with this. A hip hop label here, Grifter, does a lot of stuff in schools.

Also, if you're worried about getting non-profane stuff I'd be happy to send you my brother's album. It's good, non-explicit rap. He performed at my school recently and gave out some of his CDs.

Jeremy I've done this gig, here in Madison and with a boys' group in the Roosevelt Towers project in East Cambridge. Try some Nikki Giovanni "Ego Tripping", some Don L. Lee, all the black-power stuff that's in the Norton Anthology of Am. Fiction; kick some Paul Beatty and some Quaryesh Ali and some of the stuff in the anthology of the spoken-word stuff from the NuYorican Cafe; Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem "Incident" will kick they asses, as will some Langston Hughes poems and select Gwendolyn Brooks jams. Then go for some Emily Dickinson...you'll be surprised when they actually like the stuff the crazy old white lady did 150 years ago. (Also: Dr. Seuss.)

Black Sheep - "The Choice Is Yours"
Del tha Funkee Homosapien - "Proto Culture," "Positive Contact," "Battle Song"

wowowo, thanks! more in a bit -