HIP-HOP JOURNALISM

During the 2007–8 school year, students in Ms. Foster’s Hip-Hop Journalism class learned to use a number of digital tools that directly connected to her curricular goals of developing their skills with traditional and new media literacies. They created digital photography projects and blogs, digital stories and PowerPoint presentations, youth commentaries and podcasts, and lyrics and digital beats. They also wrote texts related to these projects and completed other writing assignments. Essentially, these students were using technological resources to sample, cut and paste, and remix multimedia texts for replay in new configurations through “digital DJ-ing” that reflected aspects of contemporary hip-hop culture. In the process, they were learning to access, understand, critique, and produce a variety of texts—including written texts—through project- based activities that utilized the strategies and tools of journalists.

This focus on working with students to develop journalistic skills using digital media was central to Ms. Foster’s instructional approach.It extended in part from discussions early on in the school’s PD sessions about effective ways to transform classroom dynamics for teaching and learning. In one PD session, we discussed the provocative book Our America (1997) by Lloyd Newman and LeAlan Jones as an example of powerful ways that young people could learn about the world and contribute to the learning of others as journalists. I shared research I had published on an underperforming urban school a few miles from V-Tech where a teacher had developed a successful curriculum unit in which her students did research, writing, and portfolio projects modeled on considerations from the book (Mahiri and Conner 2003).
LeAlan and Lloyd were guided and supported in their work by radio producer David Isay. At 14, these two African American boys began documenting and writing about life and death in the Ida B. Wells Housing Project in Chicago. In addition to the book, their work was also presented as two National Public Radio “special reports” in the late 1990s. The second NPR special, “Remorse: The Fourteen Stories of Eric Morse,” won broadcasting’s highest honor—the George Foster Peabody Award. In one of the many tributes to these young men in the front matter of the book, Adam Matthews of the Source wrote that they “convey a reality and an urgency from which even the most learned academics and so called experts fall short, and in the process usher in a new stylistic vanguard of sensitive, first-person, urban journalism.”

During professional development, we talked about the viability of positioning students as journalists in each academic discipline, particularly in light of affordances of new media that have significantly increased the techniques and tools for accessing and producing information. This comes at a time when our understanding of what constitutes journalism is being challenged and changed. This was dramatically exemplified in the case of video blogger Josh Wolf. By refusing to testify or turn over his videotape of a protest against a G8 summit, he was sent to federal prison for 226 days. His case fueled debates about who is entitled to protections of the press like the right to maintain the confidentiality of sources (Berton 2008).

In essence, it is a debate about who can claim to be a journalist as technology enables new ways to write and rewrite societal narratives. In addition to the emphasis of our PD sessions, Ms. Foster’s appreciation of pedagogical possibilities based on a journalism perspective was also linked to her work with Youth Radio. Before being hired at V-Tech, she developed curriculum materials for teachers based on the digital productions of youth in this community-based organization. It has trained thousands of teenagers in broadcast journalism, production, engineering, and media advocacy since 1992. “At V-Tech,” Ms. Foster noted, “I wanted to see if we could engage students like they do at Youth Radio.” Supporting and observing her teaching helped us address central questions of the TEACH Project like what key possibilities and problems were associated with significant uses of digital media for teaching and learning in the school and what implications this approach had for wider school settings. Ms. Foster was comfortable with me sitting in on her class, and over the school year, I observed and took field notes more than 40 times. Her only request was that I periodically let her read the field notes I wrote on my laptop during each visit. I was happy to comply.

The class met during the first block of instruction every day except Fridays. The principal had structured the first period of school as a two-hour block for several elective class offerings, to support the students’ overall academic development with engaging topics and also to help motivate them to get to school on time. As noted earlier, consistent attendance was a continual problem at the school. In her class, Ms. Foster had 24 students who pretty much reflected the demographics of the school: 7 black women, 5 Latina women, 10 black men, and 2 Latino men. I did formal interviews with Ms. Foster at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year and had many informal conversations with her and others who provided instructional and other support to this class. She also provided written narratives and reflections on her teaching as well as teacher-initiated surveys of student perspectives on different aspects of activities in the class. Additionally, two members of the TEACH research team did observations in the class and wrote descriptive and analysis notes. Importantly, the digital media itself conserved the products of the students’ work for subsequent assessment and review.

Ms. Foster is an African American teacher who holds a master’s degree in education as well as credentials in Spanish and French. She was 32 years old at the beginning of the 2007–8 school years, when she was hired to teach Spanish at the school. Clearly, she was already inclined to teach through a more task-oriented, hands-on approach rather than a more lecture-oriented style. Because she was a veteran teacher with seven years of experience—more than most of the other teachers—the principal and I “informally” asked her to take the lead in piloting the use of digital media in conjunction with the TEACH focus on professional development. She selected to do this primarily in the elective course Hip-Hop Journalism. She came up with the course’s title to signal a curricular focus on topics that were relevant and of interest to young people, including issues surrounding youth culture, global events, social class, gender, and race. She later found that the students’ use of digital media to engage these issues also reflected aspects of hip-hop culture. At the beginning of the first semester, the principal stopped by and talked with Ms. Foster about her plans for the class. Again, he affirmed his desire and support for the class to provide examples of the viability of digitally mediated learning. “I would like for this to be a model class,” he said. “Set up some technology stations. This could be a place to show what we want other teachers to do. Be on me to get things out here that are not needed. I’m big on aesthetics.”

Young Journalists

Since it was important to Ms. Foster and the TEACH Project to incorporate perspectives from Youth Radio, the principal provided funds for a person from that organization to work with the journalism class during the first semester of the academic year. Ms. Foster recruited Ms. Young, a 19-year-old Youth Radio intern who had been working for about a year as a photographer, youth commentator, and online producer. While consulting for Youth Radio, Ms. Foster had developed curriculum ideas for teachers that were posted on the organization’s website. Several of these were based on radio commentaries that had been produced and aired by this young journalist.

Only a year or two older than students in the class, Ms. Young was an African American woman who connected to them in more ways than just her youth or race. She grew up in a nearby city known locally and nationally for its high rates of poverty, violence, and crime. In her work at Youth Radio, she has produced more than 35 commentaries, photo essays, and other projects for the organization’s website and radio programs, and several of her works had been aired on National Public Radio. Her topics ranged from political events to art openings, but a number of them also focused on violence and crime. For example, she wrote and produced commentaries comparing the shootings at a major university to the shootings in her neighborhood (“We get shot here every month”) and comparing working for a corporation to prostitution in the hood (“Sellin’ your soul”). In one of her commentaries, she told radio listeners,
Shootings happen all the time in my city—I’ve even grown to expect them. But soon after my nineteenth birthday, there was one shooting that shook that attitude. It was my 17-year-old cousin Junior—my best friend. That night, I called around trying to get in touch with him. Junior’s friend J-Rock said, “Oh, you ain’t heard?” Right then, man, my heart dropped. He told me my cousin was shot.

Beyond this trauma (Ms. Young later found out that her cousin would be OK), Ms. Young’s work clearly shows the journalism perspectives and skills that Ms. Foster wanted each of her students to develop. Ms. Young also possessed a framework for learning these things that had been shaped, in part, by her experiences as a Youth Radio intern. When I interviewed her about her ideas for collaborating with Ms. Foster at V-Tech, she said,
I think it’s very important to have opportunities for leadership in this new school. Like here at Youth Radio, we youngsters take on the role of peer educators. A lot of us already have a lot of raw talent that needs a little polishing. With training we’re able to deliver that knowledge to our friends while learning in the most effective manner. And the other thing I want to mention, we’re put in real life situations and faced with real audiences here at Youth Radio. Use me for an example. I help a team of web designers build Youth Radio’s brand-new website. I get to show off my work online and in a portfolio giving me opportunities to find additional work.

In Hip-Hop Journalism, Ms. Young worked with Ms. Foster to realize these ideas, along with other perspectives and skills promoted by TEACH that were observed at various levels in the digital projects, new principles of learning, and changing practices of teaching in the class.