before I was ever a researcher or a college professor I was an elementary school teacher and I say that with pride I was an elementary school teacher and I was teaching and what many would call a underperforming school filled with black and brown faces and I had a connection to my students a rich connection and I thought that connection had everything to do with skin color until I realized and dug a little bit deeper to find out that that connection was hip-hop in this connection that I have with my students was not just a music of hip-hop it was the culture of hip-hop and I saw my students do amazing and incredible things in the classroom strictly bringing their culture into the classroom into many people the outside person will look at my classroom and say there's no learning going on there it is loud it is not academic and I saw it as organized Noize I saw as kids using everything that they had to learn so what do I mean by that I'm sure many of you if you're a teacher you have walked into a classroom specially with students who identify with hip-hop culture and they are banging away on a table just banging and you asked a child could you please stop and they look at you like I'm not banging on the table and so then you're having this moment to yourself say I just saw you banging on the table and then five seconds later they're banging on the table again but what they're doing they're drumming they are they are honing in on their African and African American spirit or you have seen a child walking down the street with no headphones on Bobby like this talking to themselves and you're thinking to yourself is this child crazy but what they're actually doing is they're a soundtrack playing in their bodies and they are responding to that soundtrack so when I was in my classroom I saw students construct masterful narratives using rap using poetry I saw young girls use their entire body to learn and see knowledge as an embodied practice and so what I was seeing in the classroom is that yes my students were learning differently and there are many many educators who have said this yes some of these students do learn differently but that does not mean they are deficient that does not mean they are deficient and these experiences brought me out of the classroom into a ph.d program because I was thinking to myself okay how can I do this over and over again how could I make this happen how can I scale this I'm going to have students be in hip-hop culture identify with hip-hop and they are in every classroom everywhere so I have big goals hip-hop everywhere but what I learned is that my students weren't just doing hip-hop they were actually participating in their cultural DNA or well Malcolm Gladwell called their cultural legacy that does that the traditions and the customs of hip-hop are actually African and African American customs and that hip-hop when you see hip-hop it is the latest iteration of black genius it is the newest thing of what you see of people creating a culture out of nothing but it isn't nothing it goes back generations and generations so my students they don't even know it but they are tapping into their cultural legacy to learn and so if they have a cultural legacy if this is black genius and if they have a way of being that they have what scholar Regina Bradley calls hip-hop sensibilities and that is a way of knowing a way of being in a way of thinking and I wanted to argue today that those hip-hop sensibilities are directly linked to predictors of success so there's fascinating work right now from people like Angela Duckworth Tony Wagner Paul tuff about what they call character strengths our mindsets and I think this research is really fascinating about our radius kids kids who have social emotional intelligence and how they're able to achieve and these are some of these predictors of success and when I look at this list so soon emotional intelligence the ability to improv curiosity optimism grit I look at this list and I say oh that's hip-hop is that how we're going to measure success because if that's how we're going to measure success oh I got I got some people for you I got some kids for you let's think about this hip-hop and let me back a little bit I'm not just talking about kids who listen to the radio right because the radio plays the same 25 songs over and over again so you we all know if we get in our car at 8 a.m. 3 a.m. 5 and 11 the same song is on I'm not talking about that hip hop I am talking about the hip hop that is in genius I am talking about the students with no formal musical training no computer programming and they make unbelievable music I am talking about the kids who will find the latest song from some body that is so underground and make it the best thing since sliced bread I am talking about the kids who movements today will become mainstream tomorrow those are the kids who identify with hip-hop they live it they breathe it this is how they see the world and if that is true and they see the world of hip-hop that means they have hip-hop sensibilities and I want to argue today those hip-hop sensibilities are directly linked to character streams so I like to call them cultural streets so let's start with the first one social and emotional intelligence if you ever go into a hip-hop cypher you have kids all in a circle and they could be a freestyle rapping they could be battling they could be dancing and when do they know when to go nobody raises their hand up as my turn around nobody does that nobody says um can I dance next how do these kids know when to go and then you could have rappers or dancers who don't know each other and they just know when to go they know who is next how do they know that that is social and emotional intelligence and then you have to listen you can't just go into the rap and your wack or you can't go into the rap and repeat what the last person said it did not be better in a better iteration of what they just said so you have to listen this is drawing on social and emotional intelligence or traditional schools the morning meetings we have kids in a circle and we say to a child what did you do last night before you even say what did all the hands go up you're saying I didn't ask you a question yet so all the hands are up and the kids you know might just can't wait to be next and then you call on them and they forget and then they look at you like you gave them a hard question they're not listening they're not invested in that activity so we call that social-emotional learning that is not social-emotional learning a cipher is social-emotional learning I am feeding off you I am listening to you I am engaging with you and then I go let's take the next grit that's funny grit you want to talk about grit hip-hop is grit African and African American genius resiliency resolve that is grit I am standing here today because people were gritty that I could be here so when you want to talk about grit you cannot talk about grit without talking about African and African Americans and hip-hop think about what hip-hop is forty years ago you have people who are we have Reaganomics post-industrial New York and they take something and make a cultural phenomenon that has lasted the last 40 years and become a billion-dollar global industry I think that's great let's take the last one let's take social and emotional intelligence now let's move to the notion to improv so in 2012 the Institute for deafness and other communication disorders they hooked up 12 freestyle rappers and freestyle there's the ability to just spontaneously create rhymes in real time so they hook these rappers up and they want to understand their brain activity and what they found was amazing these freestyle rappers prefrontal cortex was moving at amazing speeds and what is your frontal cortex is where emotion motivation and language is developed so when you want to talk about the ability to be creative the crux of that is the ability to improv to come up with real thoughts just like this that's hip-hop and so we have kids sitting in classrooms every single day with the ability to do this and because we don't identify with hip-hop we don't like hip-hop hip-hop has been co-opted and commercialized it's something that's so watered down now and the rich and robust history of hip-hop is lost that we say that's not academic but you think about the root of it we have kids in our classrooms who have the very things that we say our predictors of success and we asked them to turn it off you have students sitting in cyphers learning from each other understanding each other listening to each other and we asked them to turn it off now there's a school in Atlanta Georgia called the can desi school last year the Condesa school was the highest performing had the highest performing fifth grade class fifth on standardized tests now I'm not one for standardized tests but they're the highest performing fifth grade class and what makes this school so innovative is that at this school we put students culture first the ways in which that they want to learn their identities their hip-hop identity is first and we have seeing nothing but results also we believe in small classes and then the principles of this school are love that's our first principle when do you hear that in a school love integrity perseverance these are the principles of a school that gets results because you got to put these things first love and our students are succeeding and this is also where I teach my hip-hop class and so for my hip-hop class we bring DJs in to talk about sound energy we bring b-boys and b-girls break dancers in to talk about physics and kinetic energy and I'm watching my students understand that who they are they're hip-hop identities are directly linked to schooling and if students understand that Who I am is academic and I don't have to take my academics away when I enter the school day when I enter the school doors I can still be Who I am and academic we can see success but we can only go so far grit optimism zest the ability to improv social emotional intelligence these are all predictors of success that I argue kids who identify with hip-hop half but it's not enough it's not enough February 26 2012 Trayvon Martin showed grit he shall resolve social and emotional intelligence and it wasn't enough that night he fought for his life wasn't enough he read George Zimmerman it wasn't enough so we have kids in our classroom who have it we have to talk about racism discrimination bigotry and hate we can't just say hey you're gritty alright you're going to make it and not talk to that student about how that door may closed and not have a conversation with society as to why we're closing that door now I don't think any teacher is george zimmerman but i do think when we denies students the opportunity to express their culture in classrooms we are spirit murdering them when I'm asking you every day to walk through that door and be something that you are not I am murdering your spirit when I'm asking you to stop being who you are so I can do my job I am taking away something from you and I am murdering your spirit piece by piece and if you don't think this is right you don't say that's a little much dr. love school to Prison Pipeline we have students who are not dropping out of school they're being pushed out of school we have students we have a disproportionate amount of african-american boys in special education something is going on and each one of those kids that are pushed into the criminal justice system each one of those kids that is pushed in special education each one of those kids are pushed out of school we have murdered their spirits and so I leave you with this these kids are bright they got it if you want to talk about what success means for dictor's of success who can do this who are ready for this I got a group of kids ready but until we take the hand off of their backs that is holding them down called racism bigotry and hate they will not be able to rise thank you you