Waterloo students learn literacy skills through hip-hop

Teacher Lamont Muhammad facilitates its Hip-Hop Literacy Program. Students meet, brainstorm, listen, and write.

“The ability for a young student to learn a whole verse or sometimes even a whole CD, but haven’t been able to read fluently, and they’re able to do that. I think that in itself says something,” Muhammad said. “I see the power in it in being able to teach, able to educate students to use it as a tool because for myself it was a tool growing up.”

A tool to show examples of figurative language, simile, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia to name a few.

“It’s something that the youth are familiar with, it’s something that is a teacher, even if some don’t think so,” Muhammad said.

Each week the group heads to the studio where they’ve already recorded two songs. They’ve also put on two community performances. It’s boosting the confidence of students in the program.

“The first performance we did was scary, but this one I was ready for it and not scared,” 4th grader Kyle Kuecker said. “If you want to do it, you can. You just need to try.”

“You can do anything really, well if you just try you can do it,” 4th grader Day-Day Watson said.

“You see them starting to loosen up and break, be able to hold their head up and hold the mic, which I know lends itself to speaking,” Muhammad said.

Parents have told Muhammad about the changes they’ve seen within their children in and out of the classroom. He said even behaviors are changing.

“That’s something they feel ‘I want to be a part of.’ That ‘I don’t want to do anything to mess that up.’ So, within that you see a change in the behavior, the change in their mannerisms,” Muhammad said.

It’s something he hopes will grow to allow teachers to use hip-hip as a tool in the classroom and not feel out of the norm when doing so.

“They’re learning it already, but you just have to connect it and say ‘well this is what you’re doing when you do this, this was a metaphor he used right here, this was a simile, look at this intro, look at this lead,’” Muhammad said.

To learn more about the program visit this website.

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