"You Can't Teach It": When Urban Youth Lead Their Learning

• In Event: 66.065 - "My Cypher Keeps Moving Like a Rolling Stone": Centering Youth Voice in Hip-Hop Education

Abstract

This paper signals the importance of recognizing urban youth excellence and having opportunities for them to express this in ways that promote consequential learning. Using data from a participatory ethnography, this paper examines how to support urban youth in developing and implementing a course on hip hop they conceived, one that is rooted in urban youth communities of practice, but also one that moves past the idea of hip hop as a springboard for learning something else (e.g. not colonizing it for school purposes). We argue that youth designed and led curriculum may be a space to bring together what we know about consequential learning and culturally sustaining pedagogies to authentically construct equitable spaces for learning in urban schools.

Authors

• Joanne C. Larson, University of Rochester

• Grant Atkins, East High School

• Reenah Golden, Slam High Rochester