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| by A. David Dahmer |
| July 25, 2012 |
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More and more across the nation, universities are recognizing that the youth of a spoken word and hip-hop generation really have a lot to offer. And the University of Wisconsin-Madison has prided itself on being on the cutting edge of realizing that trend.
With that in mind, “Hip Hop in the Heartland: 7th Annual Educator and Community Leader Training Institute” kicked off at the Union South on the UW-Madison campus Monday, July 23. Each summer, UW-Madison’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) teams up with Urban Word NYC to offer educators and community leaders a weeklong program to learn the best practices in hip hop and spoken word pedagogy. The Institute brings together the leading educators, professors, emcees, and activists utilizing the media of spoken word and hip hop as relevant, dynamic, and necessary educational tools to engage students across multi-disciplinary curricula.
“This is truly a landmark institute. It’s important because it sits at the cutting edge of what matters most in our culture today,” said Damon Williams, Associate Vice Chancellor, Vice Provost, and Chief Officer for Diversity & Climate at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Youth are responding to hip hop forces, urban forces, [and] pop culture forces as much as any other educational force on the planet.”
Williams spoke at the opening of the “Hip Hop in the Heartland” conference that features daily sessions that follow themes to strengthen participants’ knowledge and provide the tools to engage the 21st-century classroom. Each day wraps up with Write, Reflect and Build sessions where participants interact with the lesson planning process, and build their own curricula that engage literacy, critical thinking, and creative writing.
“Innovators are always pushing the envelope of experimentation. They are moving forward with new styles, new ways of getting it done, new ways of bringing it, new pedagogy,” Williams said. “One of the things that we try to create with ‘Hip Hop in the Heartland’ is a space for the innovative DNA to be cultivated, to be deepened, and to be strengthened. This is a space where we want to — as a collective — challenge one another to be thinking about making associations across space, time, place, culture, and people.”
Hip Hop in the Heartland draws from educational theories such as socio-cultural theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, critical race theory, and hip hop and social justice pedagogies, to help educators and community leaders connect hip hop as both an art form and an instructional tool to improve the academic success of students who remain marginalized in our schools.
The OMAI’s First Wave program is the country’s first and only scholarship program that provides financial support for students from spoken word and hip-hop communities.
“This could never be done without our amazing partnership,” said OMAI Executive Director Willie Ney. “This year, it’s really neat because we have a partnership with the [UW-Madison] Division of Continuing Studies. When it came to Dean [Jeffrey] Russell, he had a really deep interest in hip hop affairs, hip hop education, and hip hop outreach. He basically said that he would cover all of the expenses for all of the marketing for the entire institute. He gave us a lot of love and support. So, it’s not just one unit that is supporting us, it’s multiple units across the university and it is showing the deep and pervasive transformation of the university.”
Michael Cirelli, the executive director of Urban Word NYC, opened the conference with a talk and a slide show called “Spoken Word and Hip Hop Pedagogy: Introductions and Overview.” Urban Word NYC is a grassroots not-for-profit organization that provides free, safe, uncensored, and ongoing writing, performance, and college prep opportunities for New York City teens. Cirelli is also the director of the Annual Spoken Word & Hip-Hop Teacher & Community Leader Training Institute at the UW-Madison (Hip Hop in the Heartland), and the annual Preemptive Education conference at NYU.
“I’m very passionate about dynamic ways to meet young people with creative art forms like hip hop and spoken word and to engage their literacy, to engage their creative ideas, and to find ways for them to not only grow as artists but to grow as people,” said Cirelli. “That’s the type of work that we do at an organization that I work for in New York called Urban Word NYC. We want to bring that experience to you all.”
Each day at the Institute follows a theme to strengthen the participants' knowledge and understanding of spoken word and hip-hop culture, politics, and pedagogy. In the "Write, Reflect and Build" sessions, the attendees work on lesson plans and curriculum to teach literacy, critical thinking, and creative writing. The evening programs featured readings, panel discussions, hip-hop theater, and a concert [see sidebar].
“My goal is for you to have a transformative experience and sort of figure out where you fit into all of this,” Cirelli said, “and that you’ll be able to use this to impact lives.”
Participants learn proven, hands-on techniques to develop lesson plans and strengthen their course study, as well as create a platform from which they will understand the scope of hip hop history, culture, and politics. Evening programming consists of an all-star cast who will synthesize the day trainings with effective strategies and cutting-edge multicultural educational approaches.
“Hip hop is rooted in race — the cultural backdrop of the Bronx in the black and Latino communities as a form of resistance and a form of celebration and a platform to talk about what happens in your community,” Cirelli said. “As a poet, it’s also deeply rooted in language. That’s exciting to me as an educator because we have a whole movement and a whole culture where people are excited about language.
“How do we take the hip hop, the poetry, and the spoken word and marry it with the pedagogy and how do we become innovators?” Cirelli asked. “The beautiful thing when we talk about student-centered pedagogy is that it works so successfully because we’re creating an environment where the young people have a say in the learning process, as well. In hip hop, they know more than us pretty much all of the time because they are closest to it. Young people — I don’t care if you’re from Madison, Wisconsin or Brooklyn, New York — are listening to hip hop. They can’t avoid it.”
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