MADISON — 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. 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 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.
For more information on the schedule, registration, scholarships, professional development or continuing education credits, contact Sofia Snow at 608-890-1006, ssnow@wisc.edu.
This year’s Annual Educator & Community Leader Training Institute is sponsored 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.
