#HipHopPlayListChallenge

As I continue my work towards equity in my classroom, hip-hop is something I still have so much to learn about. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone among music teachers in needing to better understand the world of hip-hop. Earlier this summer I shared my summer listening list for music teachers with suggestions for ways to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone and listen to genres of music we aren't as familiar with. The response to that post was overwhelming! So now it's time to hold ourselves accountable and take action.

Today I'm teaming up with HipHopMusicEd to challenge everyone to the #HipHopPlaylistChallenge!

Joining the challenge is easy: listen to a hip-hop song. Share what you're listening to with all of us by filling out the information about the song in this survey (you may have to do a little background research if you don't know your hip-hop styles!). Then go listen some more and fill it out again!

The great thing is we can all find new music to listen to by seeing what everyone else is listening to as well- you can view the results of the survey above to see the other responses, and we've also created a collaborative playlist on Spotify where you can see more music to listen to.

This is amazing (and free) professional development for us as music teachers- it's so important for us to become more familiar with the genre and the culture that surrounds the music- so no need to worry about limiting yourself to only classroom-appropriate songs. Our hope is that this can turn into a resource for teachers, but hopefully also begin to spark other conversations as a result, including new ways to effectively bring hip-hop into our music classrooms.

If you want to read about some basic, simple ways to incorporate hip-hop into music classes of all types, as well as just a few examples of classroom-appropriate songs, here is the post I wrote on the subject last fall. I'm hoping through this challenge we can expand on these ideas much further.