The Tattooed Teacher

He’s a gray-haired 50-year-old man.  He raps about math and positive behavior.  He can’t rap.  It’s hilarious.  Most of the kids laugh at him and say his rapping is stupid (they use better adjectives).  What’s the funniest part about it?  The students know all the lyrics. 

It doesn’t matter that the man’s rap style is better suited for Barney the dinosaur.  It doesn’t matter that the students say they hate it.  They remember what he says.  He raps about fractions and order of operations and about staying away from drugs.

The old man is trying to speak the language of today’s urban youth.  Most teachers see the hip-hop culture as a problem.  They react against it, instead of turning it into a learning tool.

At the end of the last school year, I helped produce some of his latest raps, and put them to popular rap beats.  Hopefully with a familiar beat, and a funny lyric, the content will be stick in their minds even more.