I will do almost anything to reach my students. I am constantly innovating, and I am willing to try new things to get every student in the classroom involved.
I will not, however, try to rap.
Apparently I wouldn’t make it at Tufts University, where a science professor raps his lectures. I really don’t need to say anything else. Just check out the video.
Perhaps my greatest objection is to the sideways hat.
One Comment
Zach Costello posted on February 9, 2013 at 5:58 pm
I agree with you on the sideways hat being more than ridiculous haha. However, being a huge rap/hip-hop aficionado, this reminded me of an article I read a while back on how Christopher Emdin, a Science/Physics Professor at Columbia University, collaborated with a well known rapper by the name of GZA (member of the Wu-Tang Clan) in order to better communicate the message of science to inner city kids who were struggling with the subject. GZA and Emdin began talking with each other on how to bring science into hip-hop and then, bring hip-hop into the classroom. GZA would then begin to carry out several experiments at several different schools in which students would stand in a circe and start a “Cypher” (another word for freestyle rap). Students would take turns rapping about the subject with whatever came to their mind and then another student would pick up where the other left off and so on. This article is essentially all about helping students understand something that they aren’t so comfortable with by giving them a way to relate to it. I think it’s a really creative and innovative concept that might not be so absurd. Although no one should ever dress like that Professor at Tufts haha.
You can check out the rest of the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/nyregion/columbia-professor-and-gza-aim-to-help-teach-science-through-hip-hop.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0