After leading the Media Education Lab staff to step outside their comfort zones and perform their own a capella rap, Tanya Jackson
assigned groups of teachers to the task of producing a rap star
representative of a different decade, from the 70s to today. The groups
split repsonsibilities to choose a music style, design a promotional
concept, envision a music video, and write lyrics culminating in a
brief performance sharing their work--all in 15 minutes! The teachers
responded with gusto, taking that all-important step outside our
comfort zones to produce creatively--a position we put our students in
quite often.In creating our own raps, we learned about hip hop over 40 years, using materials from the video's website: pbs hip-hop decades.