Book Reviews: Rappin' the Classroom

I sat down to read this book with interest. As a fast-approaching middle-age, white teacher with 15 years of experience in the classroom, I know rap is a weak area for me. I have listened to a variety of rap over the years but without much understanding. I am nervous about rapping and it has mostly been limited to teaching students a song from Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton. My nervousness has stemmed from a lack of knowledge, a fear of making an idiot of myself, and a worry that if I get it wrong it might result in disengaging rather than engaging my students.

Before I sat down to read, I decided on three criteria to judge this book against: am I inspired to want to learn more? Do I have a sense of excitement about using these ideas in the classroom? And has it increased my confidence to have a go?

My first impressions were influenced by the book's layout and accuracy. This is the area I felt it was let down by. It could do with an editor to go through and correct missing full stops and where text is cut off by the end of a box. As a teacher, these things niggled and I wanted to put them right with my green pen.

Francis Winston has set himself a mammoth task: this is an attempt to give a history of hip-hop, an argument for the art form and its place in the curriculum, a challenge to exam boards to up their game with their criteria for assessing rap, an explanation of the skills and techniques required, as well as three schemes of work for KS3. There are links to our current social issues and a wide-ranging, school appropriate, discography of essential listening. To fit in all of this within a little over 100 pages is quite an achievement. As a result, it cannot go into depth in some areas, but provides further reading links.

You can read this book in a morning quite easily, but to do it justice and to listen to the links you want more time. It was obvious when reading that Winston is a teacher himself. I felt like I was following a series of lectures, quickly seeking out the examples to hear the point he was making. This book would be a brilliant basis for a set of workshops.

The best parts of the book for me were the section on hip-hop terminology – for example, I had never known the difference between a rapper and an emcee – and the skills and techniques pages. These break the art of rapping down into seven teachable chunks. By following the exercises and listening to the examples I felt my confidence rise. It would be easy for any good teacher to take these and start to build their own lessons out of them, which is exactly what is then done in the scheme of work section. All the links for the audio in the lesson plans are helpfully laid out on his website (/rappintheclassroom.com). This book really will save a teacher time resourcing a new scheme.

Overall, I found this book interesting and I do want to learn more. I definitely want to find opportunities to increase the use of rap, and the time I will save creating and finding resources by using the ideas in this book will allow me a chance to practise and increase my ability to perform. I’ve still a long way to go to feel completely confident in performing in front of my classes, but I’m inspired to give it a go. I recommend this book to those wishing to increase the diversity of their music curriculum and are not sure where to start. I just wish there were more books like this on other topics I’m underconfident with. Would anyone like to write one on bhangra?