Edmund Adjapong
To the classroom podcast: episode 14
May 22, 2023
Jennifer Serravallo:
Dr. Adjapong, welcome. It's so great to see you again.
Edmund Adjapong:
Oh, thanks for having me.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Your scholarship centers around incorporating hip hop pedagogy into upper grade classrooms, especially science classrooms, and you've authored many papers, some with your mentor, Chris Emdin, about this idea of Hip Hop Based Education, HHBE. Let's start with a simple definition. What is it and what is it not?
Edmund Adjapong:
Great question. So what hip hop based education is is the authentic incorporation of hip hop elements and sensibilities into classrooms, instruction into school frameworks into education writ large, right? So we're talking about from, we can have hiphop based education and teacher education programs. We can have it in K-12 classrooms. What it's not is the opposite, which is not the best definition, but considering the inauthentic kind of incorporation or very, I want to say unthoughtful or in the incorporation of hip hop, that doesn't necessarily acknowledge the group and the context in which you're trying to incorporate these ideas and thoughts and elements into.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Do you have an example off the top of your head of an inauthentic application of hiphop? It's almost cringey. It's like, “oh, yeah, no, not that.”
Edmund Adjapong:
Absolutely. So inauthentic application of, so when we talk about hip hop, and we'll probably get into this in the conversation, hip hop is obviously, it's a culture, it's a defined culture, but hip hop exists and operates differently depending on the context and the folks in the community who are engaging with it in that moment. So for example, hip hop in the Bronx looks a little bit different. The way young people in the Bronx engage in hip hop might look a little different than the way young people in Brooklyn engage in hip hop. It might look tremendously different than the young people in Atlanta and how they engage in hip hop. So an inauthentic incorporation, in hip hop, in the classroom might look like bringing in a song, let's say, for students to memorize or make sense of, that has no connection to the students, that the students don't acknowledge or value. And that may not necessarily connect to the underpinnings of what hiphop culture is, right? And when I talk about the underpinnings of hiphop culture, I'm talking about how hip hop was conceived initially in the Bronx 1970s versus commercialized and consumer based hip hop, which there are different variants around that in the culture there.
Jennifer Serravallo:
I wanted to ask you about why, and obviously you're talking about connections to culture and authenticity but can you expand upon a little bit more of why? Why should educators embrace this approach, and especially for Black and Latino or Latina students?
Edmund Adjapong:
Yeah, there's always a big why, and I have many responses to the question why. I think one of my first responses is there's always a need for creating opportunities to draw connections between who young people are and the culture that they engage in outside of school spaces. When we think about schools and traditional school spaces they're very Euro-centric and aligned to dominant culture. And hip hop, in its essence, it's opposite of that, right? Hip hop was created by Black and immigrant communities in the Bronx as kind of a counter to dominant culture because they were feeling oppressed and engaging in, they were engaged with a lot of social injustices at that time. So hiphop was kind of a response. Hip hop is anchored in joy, it's anchored in liberation. It's anchored in freedom for oppressed communities and oppressed people. So when we think about bringing hip hop and hip hop culture and hip hop sensibilities into the classroom, it's an opportunity to connect with students and bring joy, liberation, and freedom into the classroom space, primarily with Black and Latino students and Latina students because we can also often recognize and argue that maybe school spaces and policies weren't necessarily created with them in mind. And there's the constant attack of Blackness on Blackness and the rhetoric of anti-Blackness within schools. So thinking about how we can leverage and be intentional, intentional about bringing young people and youth culture into classroom spaces is very important.
Another reason, another why is hip hop is, I mean, it's a culture obviously, and young people from all across the world engage with hip hop culture. And we talk about Black and Latino students initially, but white students are the number one consumer of hip hop. So I often argue that while in my work, I speak primarily and directly to Black and Latino students and students from systemically marginalized backgrounds, it also caters towards all students. And the rationale and argument for that is that hip hop is such a nuanced, complex, and a multimodal culture.
So aside from, we could have the cultural argument, but then there's also, in my perspective, this, it's just a good teaching argument
Jennifer Serravallo:
It's engaging…
Edmund Adjapong:
that supports, yeah, it supports learning, it, it's engaging and it creates opportunities for young people to feel safe within schools and classroom spaces, but also connected and engaged with the content. So that, that's my main argument for the use and leveraging of hip hop in school spaces.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Love it. So you talk and read a lot about some elements of hip hop pedagogy, and I think this is helpful to think through these different elements and maybe have some examples of what this can look like. So I'm just going to name one of the elements that I learned about from you.
Edmund Adjapong:
Okay.
Jennifer Serravallo:
And I'd love you to tell what's a quick definition of it and maybe an example of what this might look like in the classroom. So the first one I'll start with is "knowledge of self."
Edmund Adjapong:
Yes. Knowledge of self is the core of hip core element of hip hop and knowledge of self really comes with this. It's the critical consciousness piece of how we want students to engage with the world. So we want students to be critical. We want students to question and we want students to have the ability to challenge systems and structures and also understand that there are inequities in the world.
Jennifer Serravallo:
So what might that look like in a lesson example or in a classroom example?
Edmund Adjapong:
In a practical classroom example, it might look like I'm a science educator, so it might look like having students identify health disparities that might exist in their community, and identifying the health disparities, identifying the populations in which these health disparities are mainly impacting, and not just staying at the identification piece, but also how do we support our community and awareness. So going from that, becoming experts around these disparities, these health disparities, but then going out and raising awareness within the community or the folks that are being impacted by this. So having opportunity to learn content, but then also share your understanding of knowledge of that content and position yourself as an expert within that content area.
Jennifer Serravallo:
All right. So now let's move on to another element of hiphop pedagogy, which is graffiti art.
Edmund Adjapong:
Yeah. So when we think about graffiti art, we're thinking about how can we support young people and coming up with their own conceptualizations of art of content through art. This idea of incorporating art, but also this idea of that art is connected, it's directly connected to culture.
Sciences can be very conceptual at times, physical science in particular. So I remember teaching students and them not having a clear understanding of how to make sense or visualize particular science concepts. So they understood the content and the underpinnings of the concepts, but they had a difficult time visualizing it. So we just had opportunities where we just created art, visual art assignments. And as long as the content is accurate, you can visualize this to pick this content any other way. And it provides young people to be creative and supports this idea of deeper learning. If I'm coming up with my own conceptualization of this content and this understanding, of course I have a deeper understanding of the content because it's constructed the way I see the world and through the way through my own knowledge.
Jennifer Serravallo:
And is it important that it's sort of publicly consumed, that it has a wide audience in the same way that graffiti art would, or could it just be for the audience of the teacher? Or should it be to really be true to it? Should it be more publicly displayed? What's your vision?
Edmund Adjapong:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it could be a little bit of both. Definitely publicly displayed because of a big part of my work is to get young people to feel like scientists or to feel like mathematicians who to have this identity that aligns with the content, but that also aligns with the culture. I think we can do both and to support of students, and I'm definitely an advocate for public display. And public display can be putting it on social media, like having a class social media page or having a hung in the hallway, or having it displayed in local community spaces like barbershops, supermarkets, degrocery stores, et cetera. But it encourages the teacher to go out and build those relationships if they want their students art to be in those spaces. So there's also kind of another level of community engagement for the educator in that aspect, and that required as well.
Jennifer Serravallo:
All right. So how about MCing another element?
Edmund Adjapong:
Yeah, yeah. When we think about the MC element, we think about the master of the classroom, the master of ceremonies in hip hop. And with MCing it's really kind of the focus on the educator. When we go to a hiphop show or a concert, the MC is a person who has and knows all their content knowledge. And oftentimes in schools and classrooms, teachers are the beholder of the content knowledge. And we think about MC really thinking about a co-teaching model where we can really support teachers and getting a deeper understanding of their students and how they conceptualize content by leveraging the student as a co-teacher. And this can look like the student co-teaching a segment of the lesson. It could be the do now the opener. It can be of the introduction to the mini lesson. It could be the class discussion. And when we provide opportunities for the student to lead the lesson and segments of the lesson, it provides the educator an opportunity to understand and see how students conceptualize content information and how they're disseminating as well.
And it positions that student as an expert as well. Being able to share content knowledge with their content, with their peers and students, their peers might see them like, wow, I didn't know that, you know, you were so good at science or so well versed in math. So it provides opportunities for students to feel really good about themselves and develop some confidence and to develop a deeper identity around the content area. And also supports the students in communication and how they're communicating and demonstrating their understanding of content as well.
When we think about the MC, also thinking about different elements and strategies that hip hop artists might use to engage the crowd. We're thinking about engagement as well here. So we're thinking about call and response. You know, go to hip hop shows, the MC might say, "When I say, Hey, you say ho." They're finding different ways to engage the crowd. You don't want to go to any concert or show and not be engaged. So thinking about how we can create opportunities for engagement, but also multiple entry points for students to connect with content. So call and response in a classroom, it might simply look like the teacher creating these call and response call and response sentences that are around content area. So for Science Newton's law in motion, an object in motion, I would say, and the students will response stays in motion.
Jennifer Serravallo:
And then I think about another leadership role in hip hop is the DJ. So what's the DJ and how does that work in the classroom? Yes.
Edmund Adjapong:
Yeah, the DJ, we think about the dj and when we think about the inception of hip hop, the DJ was the core element, was the first kind of core element. And we had DJ Kool Herc learning how to put two different turntables together in a mixer in between them to come up with this sound and this technique around the breakbeat. So when I think about the DJ and my conceptualization of the DJ in hip hop really leans towards how are we leveraging technology within our class spaces and how are we supporting young people and having quality and effective understandings of technology, but also responsible ways of engaging in technology.
So thinking about just the use of technology, the use of music in the classroom when talking about DJ, thinking about how can we get the class, the whole class to curate a playlist that we use for the class.
You know, oftentimes I've realized in talking through my conversations with students and through my research that a lot of our students are not doing work and silence. Ultimately, we think that silence is ideal but there are some students who can't really engage while it's silent, so may possibly having lofi beats in the background or creating opportunities for students to curate playlists. And this idea of curation really positions of students to be a leader in that moment.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Yeah, everything you're saying just makes me think about the benefits of heightened engagement, of being relevant and responsive to kids' cultures, of centering kids and their experiences and their voices and the ways that they want to learn and the things that they want to learn. Just a really powerful, really positive vision for what the classroom can be. What did I forget? BBoying?
Edmund Adjapong:
Yeah, I think we're at, I think we did mc Graffiti. I think Bboying, right? Bboying. Yeah. When we talking about bboying and break dancing is another core element of hiphop and it's just this idea of kinesthetic learning how it's someone to graffiti arts. How can we support young people in develop their own conceptualization of content knowledge, but through movement, right? Engagement through movement. So in science classes, in a science classroom, it might look like students acting as individual molecules as we're discussing the different states of matter, going from solid to gas and gas to liquid, et cetera. In a history classroom, it might look like students acting out as political figures or figures that we're having conversations about and making sense of through history, but also understanding their perspectives and speaking as if they were them, demonstrating a deep understanding of, I know this figure, I know how they might react to this. But just acting it out in a demonstration of a deep, deeper learning and just creating opportunities for students just to get up and move around in the classroom. I know it sounds very simple, but how often have we gone to classrooms and students are literally sitting in their seats for the entire period or the entire day and the only time they get to move around is during the change of classes or the change of period.
Jennifer Serravallo:
And so you've done research around incorporating these practices into the classroom, and there's a study that I read was published in 2015 with Emdin, where you asked kids about their responses, their reactions, their feelings, the way that it impacted them as students. What did you find?
Edmund Adjapong:
So I found that through the use of hip hop, through instruction, students were able to connect their culture to their understanding of content. And through that connection they were able to develop a deeper, stronger science identity. So they felt more confident about engaging in science because the way that they were taught and the way that they experienced science, or they experienced science through their culture and through their students, they share that they might feel comfortable taking more risks when they came to science, possibly taking more science classes or advanced science classes if they had the opportunity.
And another piece that I got another result or finding that came out of my research was students challenging and critiquing school systems. And I wasn't really expecting this, and this was one that was really surprising to me because I would have focus groups and conversations with students around how they were experiencing the instruction and they would say, "I really liked that you teach that I'm being taught this way, but it's only happening in this classroom. And why is that? Why isn't the English teacher down the hall doing this? Why isn't math teacher down the hall doing this?" And that would create conversations around not all teachers are well versed in culture and students' cultures and possibly not all teachers are willing to utilize and leverage students' cultures in that way.
Jennifer Serravallo:
In addition to this scholarly writing that people can take a look at. And I'll link to some of it in the show notes. I know that you're working on a book about this topic.
Edmund Adjapong:
Yes. Yes I am.
Jennifer Serravallo:
How's it going? Do you want to share a little bit about what people can expect to find in the book?
Edmund Adjapong:
I, I'm writing. I just had a checkpoint yesterday and it, it's coming along and I think the one piece that I'm really pushing through around this work is the way my conceptualization of hiphop pedagogy has, it continues to grow and it continues to grow and shift because hiphop and the culture continues to shift. So I've kind of taken a step back in looking at this work really through culture and how teachers identify with culture and how students identify with culture. And I think a big piece that I'm adding to my work is this idea of, I, I'm still trying to find a way to frame it, but this idea of the pre-work that the teacher has to do before they can even pick up these tools and engage with their students authentically. We talked about engaging with hiphop culture, the way I define these around the authentic incorporation of hip hop, right?
Because if we have a negative bias around hip hop, that's going to come through in the way that we see our students and the way that we're engaging in this instruction. So that is the first thing that I'm really challenging and pushing teachers to do in my work. And also really articulating this work as an extension of culturally responsive education. Culturally responsive education anchors on this idea of critical consciousness incor the authentic incorporation culture and really supporting young people from becoming dependent learners to independent learners.
Jennifer Serravallo:
I love that framing. And I totally agree that beginning just thinking as how many classrooms with mostly Black and Latino students are led by white teachers who might be listening and thinking, I love this idea, but I feel like an outsider to this culture. Or I have certain concepts about what hip hop is and isn't already. I don't know enough to really embrace it, but what you're doing is you're giving them a pathway to question them themselves and their own ideas, but also to position their students as experts and
Edmund Adjapong:
Exactly.
Jennifer Serravallo:
…and to allow their students to be sort of the leaders maybe of bringing this into the classroom as well. Is that a good interpretation?
Edmund Adjapong:
That is a great interpretation. When we think about what hip hop does is that hip hop, it centers those who have been systemically marginalized and oppressed. So this framework of teaching really focuses on centering the students. And now I'm not saying that the student has to be the person, the only resource for teachers, but it is one important resource for educators and understanding how they can leverage these approaches in classrooms.
So the work really revolves around this idea of how do we build up our racial literacies, right? Because hip hop is a culture that was created by Black folks. How do we challenge our perceptions of hip hop before we can even leverage it? So in the book that I'm working on, I have a lot of self-work and prompts that teachers can use to make sense of that work for themselves. But then I also have strategies that align to all the elements that I discussed earlier that they can use to make teaching and learning more engaging that the way they can use that to center students within their work and find opportunities. So to learn more about their students' cultures.
Jennifer Serravallo:
This sounds so exciting. I hope you're nearing the end so that we can have this book soon. Sounds like very needed and really exciting work.
Edmund Adjapong:
Thank you.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Well, thank you again so much for your time today, Dr. Adjapong. I really appreciate reconnecting with you and having this conversation and I can't wait to hear listeners' responses.
Edmund Adjapong:
Likewise, thank you so much for the time and opportunity.
Jennifer Serravallo:
All right. Take care.
I now welcome my colleagues Eric and Elisha, Eric Royo, and Elisha Li. I would love to hear about some of your thoughts from that conversation. And in particular practical ideas. He was speaking largely from the perspective of a science educator and I think a lot of the listeners to this podcast may teach science but are also literacy educators. So if you have any ideas for what practical implications might look like in the ELA classroom. Eric, do you want to start us off? I know you've been doing a lot of this work.
Eric Royo:
I'm a lower elementary school educator, so I'm coming from that lens. Elementary school kids come into a class every year not knowing each other.
you're coming into an environment where there's no culture yet, there's no community yet. And I think that using hip hop as a way to create that community is such a powerful thing. And it is like how he thought about that idea too of this is this academic things to it for sure. But just that idea of community and culture within a classroom. To me, and especially in elementary school, you need that first before you can then bring out a academics.
The beginning of the year we do an identity mural. So I'll have kids we talk about the idea of identity, the different aspects of identity, especially with younger kids, breaking it down to not just racially, but culturally, the things that you like, the things that you want to do, your interest. And then they create this kind of a piece of a brick a templated brick. And then they all do that. They pick a nickname or something that, a name that expresses them in their own way. And then we put that all together. So we have this big brick wall that is this shared mural that's part of the class, but it's individual bricks that everyone brought. And to me that's the idea of hip hop. It's that you bring your individual talent so that you grow the community together.
Jennifer Serravallo:
I love that idea. So are you explicit with your kids? This is an element of hip hop culture.
Eric Royo:
For sure. So I start the year or wherever I'm at with the history of the culture, the origins, where it came from. Cause I really believe that's important. I believe that story has gotten lost over time. And just what he was saying about how their hip hop kids' hiphop is different. Their understanding of hip hop is different than my understanding of hip hop. I feel like a lot of that is because the story gets lost if story isn't told. Historically, the hip hop has been controlled by people who weren't part of the culture, the types of music that were pushed on radios or that DJs had to play with something very specific. A lot of people saw violence sold or sexuality sold, so that's what they wanted to play. But there's thousands and thousands of MCs and artists who don't get that same recognition who play amazing hip hop music nowadays, but people just don't see it.
So I think it's important to talk about that history with kids. To say it started in the Bronx is something that kids don't even know. To me that's like the quintessential, if you don't know that started from the Bronx, that's needs to be corrected immediately because the Bronx has been historically marginalized and pushed to the side. So if we can say this multi-billion dollar industry in the world that everybody does start in the Bronx. So I talk about the history first. I think it needs to be.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Thank you. Awesome. Elisha, what are the things you're thinking about as a elementary literacy educator?
Elisha Li:
I mean, I'm just thinking through, I really appreciated how Dr. Adjapong really talked about the concepts. Cause if you really just listen those concepts, it's just good teaching
And I was actually thinking of strategies from the book, Jen that The Reading Strategies Book, I touched on this idea of crowd questioning and critiquing and being critical. A lot of strategies could do with kids during the ELA block that I think are really powerful. Questioning the author bias or author authority, where is this author getting this information? Or what is author's point of view in writing this article.
Jennifer Serravallo:
And then Eric, I know Elisha talked a lot about the connection to the reading classroom. I know you've done a lot of work with writing and poetry as well. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Eric Royo:
Sure. I think I first introduced what we called it, a freestyle Fridays where every Friday kids just had opportunity to write raps and write rhymes. It was kind of a motivator because throughout the year, sometimes some of the kids had trouble writing or they didn't motivated write in certain ways. So this was just kind of a way to get them motivated. And it started with our morning meeting where I had them just rhyme their name with a word. So they would do that. They would think about that. We would eventually do that to a rhythm of a beat. We would kind of expand that to a sentence. And then we started looking at, we started doing something called rap madlibs. So we basically took poems, we read the book Hip Hop Speaks to Children but they had a whole bunch of different poems from different artists and different MCs and we remake some.
it was amazing to see how much, when I just let them go, how much they wrote. Maybe we'd have a topic of the week or something like that, but just giving them that time to, I'm not checking your work. I'm not going to correct anything. This is your work. And that was something for me growing up with writing is I always had a book on the train or the bus. I just wanted to write some things down and write raps or thoughts.
And I tried to get that routine down to where they would just write on a regular basis about themselves. And then every Friday we would have what, like I said, Freestyle Friday where we were, I'd have this big green screen and I'd put the lights and we'd have a microphone and then kids would go up. So it was a little show which they loved. And there was a call in response that I taught them that if they were the mc, they would say they rap and then they would yell, it's a freestyle Friday. And all the kids were responding. It's a Freestyle Friday. So it just created this big atmosphere. And then eventually we went into the school I was working at into their auditorium. So I put 'em on a stage and they just got bigger. And then other people from the high school kids came down and started screaming Freestyle Friday.
So it just got them to love writing and being excited about this week Friday, I'm going to write my rhymes now about it. Just in that motivation to start writing, and again to when you just give kids an opportunity to write about themselves or give 'em this format and let them go, I saw that many of them would just take off. And the types of lyrics that they wrote, the depth of it and the depth of raps. And Elisha, one of Elisha's kids who was an amazing hip hop artist, I could see him signed as a hip hop artist now, just as a third grader, as what he would write and the way he commanded presence.
Jennifer Serravallo:
I love this. I can absolutely visualize that and I can feel the energy that must have been in that classroom.
Eric Royo:
It was amazing. People asked to come in, are you doing Freestyle Friday teachers? Oh, can we come?
Elisha Li:
Yeah. And I really love that too, because I think you're positioning students and their writing identity, kind of like how Dr. Adjapong was talking about science identity. And they gained so much confidence. I mean, I had students from your class come into my class in third grade from, so second to third, and all they would want to do is write raps three, twice times, write wraps, lunch, write wraps, garden. Can I take a piece of paper and pencil out? We're going to write a rap. And then I think it just really positions them to see themselves as writers.
Jennifer Serravallo:
And I think sometimes in elementary classrooms in particular, the writing that kids do doesn't always have a place to go except to the teacher. And so I just think having this audience, I was asking that about graffiti art, just kind of this public display, this idea that my voice, my words, my ideas matter to people beyond just the walls of this classroom or beyond just my teacher's eyes and ears.
Speaking of listening skills, phonological awareness with the rying. We've got writing skills, reading skills. I mean, there's like, if you're thinking about it from a skills perspective, which checks all the boxes, but just the joy and the culturally affirming practices are just also make it so worthwhile.
Elisha Li:
Yeah, and it think it, I'm thinking of that Dr. Rudine Bishop’s framing of windows and mirrors, that if this learning about hiphop culture could be a window for some students and for other students is the mirror. And then there's the sliding doors. And I think our students need both regardless of how they identify.
Elisha Li:
So I think it's a lot of work for teachers, good work, where you have to really know the content, know the culture, whether it's a book you're reading or a culture you are studying or exploring with students and having those honest conversations with students. And I've had a lot of moments like that in my classroom too, where students will say something that might not be accurate or culturally even appropriate, but they're also 6, 7, 8. So are we going to just say, don't say that that's not nice? Or are we going to say, oh, I wonder where you got that idea from, or tell me why you think that. And then have them examine where that came from. And then it's hard because you kind of have to pause yourself as an educator to have those conversations. But they are really, are so powerful.
Jennifer Serravallo:
Well, thank you both so much for your time today and for all your great insights. And Eric, thank you for sharing your ideas.
Eric Royo:
For sure I appreciate it.
Jennifer Serravallo:
…and practical implications for the classroom. Take care of both of you.
Eric Royo:
All right, take care.
Elisha Li:
Thank you.