Ex-teacher now raps to rework history lessons
PHOENIX — Sit down. Be quiet. Follow instructions.
Brandon Brown followed these rules when he started teaching, seeking order in a classroom setting he was all too familiar with growing up.
But he quickly realized that was not working for his students and that they were just regurgitating what he told them. So, he decided to get creative.
Brown, a former history teacher and assistant elementary school principal, is now a Billboard-charting educational rapper who performs around the country.
He founded School Yard Rap, a California-based company that produces music about historical Black, Latino and Indigenous people often not found in traditional textbooks.
“By state standards, my students had to learn about old white slave owners, but they were young Black kids, and it wasn’t connecting,” said Brown, who released his latest album under his stage name, “Griot B.”
“This education system is whitewashed completely. But doing what I do, I’m able to introduce and refocus on people of color so students are getting the full range of American history,” he said.
Teachers have long sought ways to deliver a complete version of U.S. history that engages their students and includes contributions by people of color.
They have been reenergized after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd to take different approaches in the classroom that would challenge an education system many believe doesn’t allow for critical thinking and forces a narrow worldview.
They also are facing increased pressure from politicians and other critics who take issue with how schools address diversity and representation, including a recent push to ban critical race theory, an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions.
While there is little evidence that critical race theory itself is being taught to K-12 public school students, some ideas central to it, such as lingering consequences of slavery, have been.
Teaching has evolved significantly in the past decade to focus more on critical thinking as opposed to rote memorization, said Anton Schulzki, a history teacher in Colorado Springs and the president of the National Council for the Social Studies.
Some of the shift started with the implementation of Common Core, which placed an emphasis on teaching students how to find and analyze sources.
Instead of just learning dates and names, students learn how to form arguments, to find factual evidence to support their claims and to challenge and defend different viewpoints.
“We’re trying to get students into this notion of asking questions and being able to take what they are able to do and put into practice that whole inquiry method,” Schulzki said. “We want them to be good citizens, and the way you become a good citizen is you ask questions, and then you try to do something about it.”
Students also need to learn more about the resilience and accomplishments of marginalized communities, said John Deville, who has been an educator in Macon County in North Carolina for nearly three decades.
Teachers need to show people of all backgrounds as more than victims and as individuals with agency and power, he said.
In his classroom, Deville, who is white, avoids framing individuals as either “villains or plaster heroes,” and he incorporates more than just European and white perspectives on historical events.
In a unit on Christopher Columbus, Deville said he spends time creating a vision of the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact and does not diminish the violent ways Native Americans were treated.