Eric Hellweg Summary

Hip-Hop can be an effective strategy to engage students in core curriculum as well as expand learning among students with all learning modalities. Applying Hip-Hop to teaching is Hip-Hop pedagogy (Adjapong and Emdin 2). In the article, “Hip-Hop Helps Teach Everything from English to Algebra,” Eric Hellweg mentions different teachers such as Alan Sitomer from Lynwood, California, that use Hip-Hop as a way to teach to their students. Sitomer came up with the idea of trying to translate the words of Dylan Thomas for his students to understand. Sitomer found a “bridge” from Thomas to the famous African American rapper, Tupac Shakur. The teacher used the lyrics of certain Tupac songs to help his students to get a better understanding of the writings

A musical group that goes by the name of the “Funkamentalz” write and produce homemade rap songs about the periodic table of the elements (Hellweg para 28). In “Implementing Hip-Hop Pedagogy in the Urban Science Classroom,” professor Christopher Emdin and student, Edmund Adjapong share their information on an experiment they did, teaching science using Hip Hop. In “Hip-Hop Helps Teach Everything from English to Algebra,” as the title of the article says Hellweg, talks about how Hip-Hop teaches everything from English to math. Although teaching through songs is more popular, Hip-Hop is also being taught with graffiti. In an article written by Kelly Wood, she mentions that using graffiti allows students to express themselves and their cultural comprehension (Wood para 3). Some teachers use graffiti murals as projects. On article says, “the graffiti mural provides comprehensible input by including new and diverse ways of looking at the text […] The graffiti mural is also an example of a tactile text that emphasizes a kinesthetic, touch-based approach to learning” (Hadi-Tabassum para 5). Whether Hip-Hop is being taught through music or graffiti, it is a very effective way of