Ive seen such better retention post-covid intentionally working in this manner and i can not suggest enough.

Cultural responsiveness is in part about creating culture, not only reflecting the culture that the students are already familiar with.

More than just narrow views of achievement play the part

Cultural competence is reading the world around

Being able to decipher meaning from what we’ve found

Hip hop is making something fresh, something new

Flipping something out of nothing it’s what we do.

-Rex Sturdevant

where it comes from.

Marching bands with fewer hands take a seat, use your feet, one man band

No need to speak when the beat is so strong

New Orleans gave us jazz and the horn of Armstrong.

Even-tually NYC got the sound.

Jazz Age all the rage, but mostly up town.

The drum set set the tone, back bone of sound.  

Uneven beats for uneven streets made it swing from the ground

They said it wouldn't last, all the way in the past 

But the years flew by, went by in a flash

Once the underdog but now sits on top

Hip-Hop music is now king of the block

push back

Our sweater vest life is like a prison uniform, uniformed.

Transform…

We are democrats in an anti democracy, it’s crazy.

Citizens are dangerous. Danger to a citizenry of compliance.

Push back, push back.

Digging deeper into culture that us white folks might not know.

BIPOC students’ identities are the source of what to show.

Cultural knowledge and consciousness is our source from day to day.

Giving kids a way to share all the stuff they’ve learned along the way.

-Kim Ilardi, PS 244q

A whole new series of problems that they were faced with

Denial of financial supports and education

So many blacks wound up back on plantations

Systems in place to ensure they never make it

Sharecropping was just another form of enslavement

Couldn’t prosper the same as the rest of the nation

Had to make moves bringing the Great migration

Each out on their own, no longer a collective

Still found a way to express that new perspective

Repackaged their work songs, chants and spirituals

to emphasize the pain they now felt as individuals

Rap Hook

Don’t hide what you feel inside

Put it on your shoulder, cred inclines

Go Bigger, go louder, clan grows, record sampler

Talking, rapping, spinning for justice, block brought us together to unify just us.

From slaves to governing a nation

Their history remarkable 

Even with adversity their unstoppable

Their peoples history is long 

And For their pain they wrote some songs

Wade in the water

Follow the Drinking Gourd

Swing Low Sweet Chariot 

I could give you many more.