This book brings together veteran and emerging scholars from a variety of fields to chart new territory for hip-hop based education. Looking beyond rap music and the English language arts classroom, innovative chapters unpack the theory and practice of hip-hop based education in science, social studies, college composition, teacher education, and other fields. Authors consider not only the curricular aspects of hip-hop but also how its deeper aesthetics such as improvisational freestyling and competitive battling can shape teaching and learning in both secondary and higher education classrooms. Schooling Hip-Hop will spark new and creative uses of hip-hop culture in a variety of educational settings. Contributors: Jacqueline Celemencki, Christopher Emdin, H. Bernard Hall, Decoteau J. Irby, Bronwen Low, Derek Pardue, James Braxton Peterson, David Stovall, Eloise Tan, and Joycelyn A. Wilson “Hip hop has come of age on the broader social and cultural scene. However, it is still in its infancy in the academy and school classrooms. Hill and Petchauer have assembled a powerful group of scholars who provide elegantly theoretical and practically significant ways to consider hip hop as an important pedagogical strategy. This volume is a wonderful reminder that ‘Stakes is high!’” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison “This book is a bold, ambitious attempt to chart new intellectual, theoretical, and pedagogical directions for Hip-Hop Based Education. Hill and Petchauer are to be commended for pushing the envelope and stepping up to the challenge of taking HHBE to the next level.” —Geneva Smitherman, University Distinguished Professor Emerita, English and African American and African Studies, Michigan State University

Many educators already know that hip-hop can be a powerful tool for engaging students. But can hip-hop save our schools—and our society? Hip-Hop Genius 2.0 introduces an iteration of hip-hop education that goes far beyond studying rap music as classroom content. Through stories about the professional rapper who founded the first hip-hop high school and the aspiring artists currently enrolled there, Sam Seidel lays out a vision for how hip-hop’s genius—the resourceful creativity and swagger that took it from a local phenomenon to a global force—can lead to a fundamental remix of the way we think of teaching, school design, and leadership. This 10-year anniversary edition welcomes two new contributing authors, Tony Simmons and Michael Lipset, who bring direct experience running the High School for Recording Arts. The new edition includes new forewords from some of the most prominent names in education and hip-hop, reflections on ten more years of running a hip-hop high school, updates to every chapter from the first edition, details of how the school navigated the unprecedented complexities brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd, and an inspiring new concluding chapter that is a call to action for the field.

For over a decade, educators have looked to capitalize on the appeal of hip-hop culture, sampling its language, techniques, and styles as a way of reaching out to students. But beyond a fashionable hipness, what does hip-hop have to offer our schools? In this revelatory new book, Marc Lamont Hill shows how a serious engagement with hip-hop culture can affect classroom life in extraordinary ways. Based on his experience teaching a hip-hop–centered English literature course in a Philadelphia high school, and drawing from a range of theories on youth culture, identity, and educational processes, Hill offers a compelling case for the power of hip-hop in the classroom. In addition to driving up attendance and test performance, Hill shows how hip-hop–based educational settings enable students and teachers to renegotiate their classroom identities in complex, contradictory, and often unpredictable ways. “One of the most profound, searching, and insightful studies of what happens to the identities and worldviews of high school students who are exposed to a hip-hop curriculum." —Michael Eric Dyson, author, Can You Hear Me Now? “Hill’s book is a beautifully written reminder that the achievement gaps that students experience may be more accurately characterized as cultural gaps—between them and their teachers (and the larger society). This is a book that helps us see the power and potential of pedagogy.” —From the Foreword by Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life offers a vibrant, rigorous, and comprehensive analysis of hip-hop culture as an effective pedagogy, cultural politics, and a mobilizing popular form. This book is invaluable for anyone interested in hip-hop culture, identity, education, and youth.” —Henry Giroux, McMaster University “This book marks the time where our modern literature changes from entertainment to education. A study guide for our next generation using the modern day struggle into manhood and beyond.” —M-1 from dead prez

Christopher Emdin is an assistant professor of science education and director of secondary school initiatives at the Urban Science Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in urban education with a concentration in mathematics, science and technology; a master's degree in natural sciences; and a bachelor's degree in physical anthropology, biology, and chemistry. His book, Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation is rooted in his experiences as student, teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban schools and the deep relationship between hip-hop culture and science that he discovered at every stage of his academic and professional journey. The book utilizes autobiography, outcomes of research studies, theoretical explorations, and accounts of students' experiences in schools to shed light on the causes for the lack of educational achievement of urban youth from the hip-hop generation.

A New York Times Best Seller "Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education."—Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner author of South To America An award-winning educator offers a much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes 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 demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven Cs” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.

"A fictionalized story about the life of young Booker T. Washington. Living in a West Virginia settlement after emancipation, nine-year-old Booker travels by lantern light to the salt works, where he labors from dawn till dusk. Although his stomach rumbles, his real hunger is his intense desire to learn to read.... [A] moving and inspirational story." -- School Library Journal, starred review

Hip-Hop and Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline was created for K-12 students in hopes that they find tangible strategies for creating affirming communities where students, parents, advocates and community members collaborate to compose liberating and just frameworks that effectively define the school-to-prison pipeline and identify the nefarious ways it adversely affects their lives. This book is for educators, activists, community organizers, teachers, scholars, politicians, and administrators who we hope will join us in challenging the predominant preconceived notion held by many educators that Hip-Hop has no redeemable value. Lastly, the authors/editors argue against the understanding of Hip-Hop studies as primarily an academic endeavor situated solely in the academy. They understand the fact that people on streets, blocks, avenues, have been living and theorizing about Hip-Hop since its inception. This important critical book is an honest, thorough, powerful, and robust examination of the ingenious and inventive ways people who have an allegiance to Hip-Hop work tirelessly, in various capacities, to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.