The 9th Annual Hip-Hop in the Heartland Educator and Community Leader Training Institute will be held July 7-11 at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., on the UW-Madison campus.
Hosted by the UW-Madison Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) in partnership with Urban Word NYC, participants will be immersed in instruction on dynamic workshops on the best-practices and multi-disciplinary tools to engage students in history, language, political science and other topics along with instruction on using performance art to build and enhance curriculum.
The institute is designed to give teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, school personnel, and community youth leaders as well as social justice and urban education practitioners a better understanding of and how to apply the learning principles behind traditional spoken-word and hip-hop. The annual weeklong series of workshops are offered in a face-to-face setting with world-renowned facilitators. 
“This 9th year of dynamic teacher training, performance, and research situates us in an important time in American Education,” said Michael Cirelli, Executive Director of Urban Word/NYC/ Los Angeles. “With teachers grappling with Common Core, and administrators straining to find effective strategies to serve our students, hip-hop education – a pedagogy that centers youth voice as an integral part of teaching and learning – is more important now than ever. The summer institute provides a transformative platform for educators and community leaders to elevate their practice, approach, and relationship to their students through voice-centered hip-hop educational theory, and most importantly: practice.” 
“The Ninth Annual Hip Hop in the Heartland promises to be the most exciting and dynamic yet,” said Willie Ney, Executive Director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. “In addition to the world-class returning artist-practitioners and hip-hop studies scholars presenting as part of the Institute, a new group or cutting-edge hip-hop educators will be featured for the Institute which has already established itself as one of the most innovative summer educational experiences in higher education. Madison truly has become an important global center for teachers and community leaders to be trained in how to integrate hip hop pedagogy into the teaching and learning experience in order to connect deeply and profoundly with their youth audiences and communities.”
Each day, institute participants will learn proven, hands-on techniques that will help them to develop lesson plans and strengthen their course study, as well as create a platform from which they will understand the scope of hip-hop history, culture and politics. The night programming consists of an all-star cast of lecturers and performers who will synthesize the day trainings with effective strategies and cutting-edge multicultural educational approaches.
This year, participants will have the opportunity to create their own lesson plans and presentations with experts in the fields of hip-hop and social justice pedagogy, as well as Theater of the Oppressed practitioners. These opportunities will help educators deepen their practice as spoken word and hip-hop educators, as well as engaging the best practices in student-centered education models.
In addition to the opportunity to network with education colleagues from across the nation and share approaches to better reach, mentor and improve student behavior and achievement, participants will take part in hands-on workshops and curriculum-building lessons throughout the week led by the following experts and practitioners:
- Piper Anderson, a faculty member at NYU’s Gallatin School; Director of Education and Artist Development for Young Audiences New York, which is one of the oldest and largest providers of arts-in-education in the country;
- Crystal Belle, an educator, freelance writer and poet whose research has taken her around the world exploring the significance of hip-hop in urban communities;
- Baba Israel, an artist, educator, emcee, beat-boxer, and theatre artist who has worked internationally developing youth-centered projects;
- Gloria Ladson-Billings, Ph.D., Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Hip Hop in the Heartland faculty of record;
- Bettina Love, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Theory & Practice at the University of Georgia;
- David Stovall, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Featured instructors and performers will help educators connect hip-hop as both an art form and an instructional tool to improve the academic success of students by drawing on educational theories such as socio-cultural theory, culturally-relevant pedagogy, critical race theory, and social justice practices. This year’s Annual Educator & Community Leader Training Institute is offered by Urban Word, NYC, the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement, the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives with support from UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies.
For more information or to register contact Sofia Snow at 608-890-1006, ssnow@wisc.edu.
Day Programming | Let’s Build: Morning and afternoon sessions are aimed at giving course participants the tools to engage the 21st century classroom. Each day follows a theme that will further strengthen participants’ knowledge and understanding of spoken word and hip-hop culture, politics and pedagogy, as well as social justice and critical literacy frameworks. The afternoon offers Write, Reflect & Build sessions where participants interact with the lesson planning process and build their own curricula that engages literacy, critical thinking and creative writing.
Opening Night & Open Mic | Get Open: The opening night features NYC poet, playwright, actor and healer Piper Anderson.
Monday, July 7: Building the Cypher: Reimagining Community & Pedagogy
9:00-10:30 a.m. Hip Hop, Hip Hope: Reinventing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy with Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, and welcome with Institute Director Michael Cirelli (both cohorts)
11 p.m. – 1 p.m. The Mega Cypher with Baba Israel (both cohorts) This large group session will explore the power of the cypher to unlock creative energy and build group solidarity. We will break into small crews and cyphers and then unite for the mega cypher.
1 p.m. -2 p.m. LUNCH
2 p.m. -4 p.m.
White Sight or White Hype with Baba Israel COHORT: First Wave
White sight or White hype: exploring how hip hop can transform the conversation on race and privilege vs. a continued cycle of cultural appropriation. Through writing, discussion, and media critique will create a safe space to investigate this theme and come up with tangible actions to address issues of race and privilege in the lives of teachers, artists, and community arts workers.
Diggin In The Crates of The Soul with Intikana COHORT: Urban Word
Looking for the perfect poem? Searching for the perfect song? Sometimes, we forget that greatness is no further than inside of us. Through various meditation and writing exercises, we will challenge ourselves to evolve and become stronger writers, teachers, artists, and mentors. In this workshop, we are looking to dive deep into the potential of our legacy. It is possible that our deepest poems and songs have yet to be written as we are still learning how to dig through the crates of our souls.
4:30 – 6 p.m. Write, Reflect & Build
During these Write, Reflect & Build sessions, institute participants will work to engage their own pedagogy with the goal of creating and developing their own curricula and presentations. The week culminates with participant presentations and resource sharing that we can all take into our classrooms and learning spaces. Facilitators represent a range of diverse expertise and disciplines and will create learning environments that are both hands-on and theoretical, in order to give you not only the tools to take to your classrooms, but also the framework to be accountable and sustainable in your practice.
( hoose 1 Group for Week)
PRAXIS Takes Practice with Piper Anderson
Reflective practitioners cultivate reflective students. In this workshop, we will explore ways of using spoken word poetry as a tool for critical self-reflection. To focus our inquiry we’ll explore the following questions: How can we make learning transparent for students so that they are developing habits of mind that empower them to take charge of their learning? Through writing exercises, mindfulness practices, and the use of imagination we’ll build an arsenal of tools for cultivating a practice of reflection for ourselves that we can pass on to our students.
Narratives that Amplify: Using the 5th Element of Hip Hop, Students’ Lives & Multiliteracies to Create Classrooms Focused on Social Justice with Bettina Love
This workshop aims to assist educators in creating curriculum that is focused on the sociopolitical lives of students to promote social justice, community-building, and critical thinking in the context of the elements of Hip Hop (Graffiti, MCing, Deejaying, Breakdancing, and Knowledge of Self and Community). The overall goal of the workshop is to teach educators how to use the fifth element of Hip Hop – Knowledge of Self and Community – to help students create counter-narratives that reflect their social and cultural identities. Through the analysis of student interviews and work, along with teaching videos, the workshop highlights the educational outcomes of Hip Hop pedagogy when linked to the fifth element of Hip Hop, formal school curriculum, the sociopolitical lives of youth, and multiliteracies.
8 p.m. Opening Performance: Remembering Why We Teach with Piper Anderson
In this multidisciplinary performance Piper Anderson ask the question, “Why Teach?” Through poetry, movement and audience participation she shares stories reflecting on her fifteen years as a teaching artist working in communities, prisons, and universities. In a time when competing interests and politics make it so difficult to love the craft of teaching its more important than ever to remember why we chose this path.
Tuesday, July 8: Building a Framework for Critical Literacy & Hip-Hop Education
10 a.m. -12 p.m.
White Sight or White Hype with Baba Israel COHORT: Urban Word
Diggin In The Crates of The Soul with Intikana COHORT: First Wave
12 p.m.-1 p.m. LUNCH
1 p.m. – 3 p.m.: Building a ‘lifetime circle:’ English Education in the time of Mass Incarceration with Dr. Maisha Winn (both cohorts)
3:30- p.m. -5 p.m. Write, Reflect & Build
PRAXIS Takes Practice with Piper Anderson
Narratives that Amplify: Using the 5th Element of Hip Hop, Students’ Lives & Multiliteracies to Create Classrooms Focused on Social Justice with Bettina Love
7 p.m. Institute Mixer
Wednesday, July 9: Social Justice & Radical Story Telling
9:30 a.m. -11:30 p.m.
Warrior (w)rites: spoken word as a radical art tradition with Amanda Torres COHORT: First Wave
“in art as in life, the word carries the love and aspiration of people who use language, like territory, to struggle for a better world” – Juan Gelman
What is strength? What makes us strong? Spoken word is a performance textof resistance and empowerment. In this workshop, we will examine art-as-resistance movements such as Los Campesinos and the Black Arts movement, cross-cultural myths and media exploring what it means to be a Warrior. Together, we will explore what it is in your life and community worth fighting for and worth writing for.
Hip Hop and Martial Arts: The Warrior Elements with Intikana COHORT: Urban Word
You think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me? In this multi-media workshop, we will explore and study the warrior nature of Hip Hop and how it manifests through Style Writing/Graffiti, DJ-ing/Turntablism, B-Boying/B-Girling, MC/Battling, Beatboxing, and Knowledge. As a group, we will analyze and discuss the histories of Hip Hop and Asian/Afrikan Martial Arts. We will also show how these sacred ways of life relate in terms of overall philosophy, influence, and inspiration.
11:30 p.m. — 2:30 p.m. LUNCH
12:30 p.m. –2:30 p.m.
Warrior (w)rites: spoken word as a radical art tradition with Amanda Torres COHORT: Urban Word
Hip Hop and Martial Arts: The Warrior Elements with Intikana COHORT: First Wave
3 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
I Got A Story to Tell: Hip-Hop and Storytelling Workshop with Crystal Belle (both cohorts)
This workshop will explore the connections between hip-hop and storytelling. More specifically, pedagogical strategies and unit plans will be offered as a way to outline how to use hip-hop as a powerful teaching tool in the classroom. There will be a particular focus on literary elements and story development and participants will create a mini-draft of a story using the techniques provided.
5 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Write, Reflect & Build
PRAXIS Takes Practice with Piper Anderson
Narratives that Amplify: Using the 5th Element of Hip Hop, Students’ Lives & Multiliteracies to Create Classrooms Focused on Social Justice with Bettina Love
Thursday, July 10: Equity. Stewardship & Resistance
9 a.m.–11 a.m.
Life in the Crucible: Hip-Hop, Skill Development and the Perpetual Threat of the State with David Stovall (both cohorts)
The proposed workshop seeks to address the following question: What does it mean to use the context of hip-hop to communicate discernable skills in Language Arts and Social Studies classrooms under perpetual actions of the state to “standardize” learning? Using Chicago as the context, the workshop will provide examples from a Social Studies (ethnic studies specifically) classroom to provide tangible examples of skill development through lessons centered in student’s understanding of their present conditions. In the age of national standards and “common core,” the hope is to provide participants with tangible strategies to navigate the current moment.
11:30 p.m.–1 p.m. Pick One
Poetic Justice: Using Hip-hop/Poetry to Promote Social Equality with Crystal Belle
This workshop will explore the ways in which hip-hop and poetry can be used as a tool of promoting social equality in the classroom and beyond. Participants will look at a variety of poems and songs that include authors like Saul Williams and June Jordan and hip-hop artists like Common and Lauryn Hill. After analysis and discussion of the poems/songs, participants will identify poetic elements and create their own lesson plan based on strategies taught.
Professional Stewardship & Safe Space in the Classroom with Amanda Torres
Educators often face moral and ethical dilemmas on how to keep safe spaces genuinely safe. From dating to disclosure, it can be hard to know how to make the best decisions. In this workshop, we will use Boal’s forum theater techniques, writing and facilitated dialogue to begin a national conversation around these issues. Additionally, we will share practical advice and resources for how to create a culture of accountability, safety and healing for the young people whom we serve.
Talking Back: When Audiences Resist & Create Alternatives with Nuala Cabral
Consumers and audiences are no longer being passive, especially when they are media literate. In this workshop we will examine several examples of audiences and consumers resisting media and creating new alternatives. We will explore memes, youth news, social media campaigns and other ways in which audiences and consumers are talking back and challenging dominant narratives and representations. As educators we will reflect on ways to integrate “talk backs” into the classroom in meaningful ways. Participants will create their own memes that will make people stop and think about media and our everyday lives.
1:30 p.m.–3 p.m. Lunchtime Keynote with Dr. Bettina Love
Beautiful Minds: Hip Hop Education from Birth and Beyond
Hip Hop is a complex cultural and social phenomenon with historically-situated activities that influence children’s cognitive functions from birth, thus creating a Hip Hop epistemological stance. By engaging in Hip Hop’s cultural practices, young children gain sophisticated cognitive skills that are rarely recognized in schools. Dr. Love’s talk will examine her research that highlights these early learning experiences of children who identity with Hip Hop for application in early childhood and elementary education to link children’s learning and development to their Hip Hop identity.
3:30 p.m. -5 p.m. Media Literacy
Teaching Critical Media Literacy Without Alienating Pleasure with Nuala Cabral (both cohorts)
We live in a media saturated world—but are we asking questions about the media we consume on a daily basis? How do we help young people be critical consumers of popular media without alienating them? Educators will leave this workshop more informed about mass media and better prepared to integrate and facilitate critical media literacy into the classroom.
7 p.m. Institute Open Mic
Institute participants and mentors, as well as First Wave students perform original poetry and hip-hop.
Friday, July 11: Moving Past Metaphors, & Institute W/RAP Up!
10 a.m.-11:30 a.m. Social Justice is NOT a Metaphor: Into the Struggles and Contradictions of Justice-Centered Teaching with David Stovall (both cohorts)
The proposed workshop takes from a 2012 article by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang that addresses the difference between rhetoric and authentic action. Because this work includes asking deeper questions of one’s self, the current political moment and the larger context, the workshop provides an example of the struggles of engaging the larger project of social justice in education. Beyond the popular rhetoric of “social justice,” the workshop seeks to engage the struggles and contradictions that perpetually challenge our ability to teach in manners that are relevant and connected to the lives of our students.
12 p.m.-1 p.m. Institute W/Rap Up with Michael, Intikana, and Maisha
Pedagogues of the NEXT Biographies:
Michael Cirelli (Director of Wisconsin Summer Educator’s Institute) is the Executive Director of Urban Word NYC, a grassroots non-profit organization that provides free, safe, uncensored and ongoing writing and performance opportunities for NYC teens (www.urbanwordnyc.org ). He was the co-presenter of the 4th Annual Hip-Hop Education Summit in NYC, and has been a lead presenter/facilitator at other hip-hop and education summits in Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland and Washington D.C. He also teaches a course on hip-hop and literature at the College of New Rochelle, and an online course at Bank Street College of Education. He has his MFA in Poetry from The New School, and is the author of the award-winning curriculum Hip-Hop Poetry & The Classics for the Classroom (Milk Mug, 2004 www.hiphopintheclass.com), a standards-based curriculum that explores the relationship between hip-hop lyrics and “classic” poems. His newest curriculum, Poetry Jam, was published by Recorded Books. He is also author of four collections of poetry. He has been published in numerous journals and magazines, and was also featured on season 5 of Def Poetry Jam on HBO.
Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the 2005-2006 president of the American Educational Research Association. Her research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards, including the H.I. Romnes faculty fellowship, the Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson Outstanding research award. Her work investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education. The author of the critically acclaimed books, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, she has also written numerous journal articles and book chapters.
Maisha T. Winn (formerly Maisha T. Fisher) is a former public elementary school and high school teacher and has worked extensively with youth in urban schools and in out-of-school contexts throughout the United States. She earned her Masters in Arts in Language, Literacy, and Culture at Stanford University and her doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. During her postdoctoral research fellowship at Teachers College, Columbia University, Maisha conducted an ethnographic study of student poets in New York City. Her ethnography, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (Teachers College Press), follows the lives of student poets and their teachers from the Power Writers collective in the Bronx. Winn serves as an advisor to the documentary, “To Be Heard,” about the Power Writers. She is also the author of an ethno-history of African American readers, writers, and speakers of the Black Arts Movement entitled Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge). Most recently, Maisha’s continued work examining youth performing literacy and more specifically the intersection of arts in the lives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated girls has been published in Girl Time: Literacy, justice, and the school-to-prison pipeline (Teachers College Press). Using a “humanizing research lens” to think about the ways in which young people and their teachers can contribute to theories and knowledge sharing in the educational research community, Maisha and her colleague, Django Paris, edited a forthcoming volume about the need to decolonize research methods with youth and communities entitled Humanizing Research: Decolonizing research with youth and communities (Sage, January 2013). Maisha’s work in urban public schools in the southeast is documented in a co-authored book Writing instruction in the culturally relevant classroom (co-authored with Latrise Johnson, 2011) was published in the National Council of Teachers of English Principles in Practice Series Additionally, her research has been published in numerous journals including Harvard Educational Review; Review of Research in Education, Race, Ethnicity, and Education; Anthropology and Education Quarterly; Research in the Teaching of English, Journal of African American History, Written Communication, and English Education. She currently serves as the Susan J. Cellmer Endowed Chair of English Education in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Baba Israel was raised in New York by parents who were core members of the Living Theatre. He developed as a young artist exploring spoken word, Hip Hop, and experimental performance. He lived and worked in Australia working on major community theatre projects and festivals. He has toured as an emcee, beatboxer, and theatre artist across the US, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, performing with artists such as Outkast, The Roots, Rahzel, Lester Bowie, Afrika Bambaataa, Vernon Reid, and Bill Cosby. Previous directorial work includes the Project 2050 (New World Theatre), Countryboy Struggle (Maxwell Golden) and Sharpening SAWDS. He has worked on sound design for theatre and dance projects with Renita Martin’s It is the Seeing and Rha Goddess. He was co-founder and Artistic Director of Playback NYC Theatre Company which brought theatre to prisons, hospitals, shelters, and arts venues. As an educator he has worked internationally developing projects with a young people centered focus. He holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary arts from Goddard in the United States. He became Artistic Director/CEO of Contact in 2009, after several years of performing and leading workshops at the venue as a visiting artist. He has returned to New York to develop projects in theatre, music, and education.