Patricia M. Sorrentino
While teaching these under-credited and over-aged juniors and seniors, I have found it is important to ask them what it is they are interested in. If the students can feel a sense of ownership over their education, they will be more willing to participate in class discussions, in- and out-of-class activities, and projects. This unit will easily allow for my students to have some choice over what they read. I will ask them to make a classroom list of their favorite rap artists and songs; then based on this list I can choose the lyrics I will ask my students to "analyze."
Prior to asking my students for their input, I will already have a set of lyrics put together, which I know they will enjoy based on my experience with them. A helpful resource will be
The Anthology of Rap
edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois.
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Within this anthology, I can find a slew of song lyrics written by most every well-known rap artist from the beginning of rap all the way to current time.
Since most of my students have not had much experience with poetry, it will be my job to help them put together the list of poems that will best interest them. A helpful way to start is to research the rap artists my students love and find out who their favorite poets are. This becomes helpful because a lot of rap artists' idols are well-known poets and their poetry deals with similar themes and cultural experiences as the rap artists' lyrics. To do this, I will offer biographical information on some of the rappers chosen to be in this unit. Within this biographical information, we can extract some poets' names and start creating a list to work from. Some great resources in finding poetry to complement rap lyrics are http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/langston_hughes_2004_9.pdf,
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http://www.ctadams.com/famous1.html,
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Tupac Shakur's
The Rose that Grew from Concrete
,
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and Nikki Giovanni's
The 100 Best African American Poems
.
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