The traditional way of teaching, in which the teacher lectures in front of the students while they take notes, may work for some, but many students lose interest. That’s what was happening to the second-year students at the Jaraguá State Technical High School, in the city of São Paulo. “Half of the people would fall asleep, the other half would lose interest, and only about five of us could focus. It was annoying to us, and to the teacher too,” recalls Murilo Inácio de Oliveira, 18, one of the creators of the “Viewed through Rap” project.

Inspired by a challenge from their sociology teacher, de Oliveira and two of his friends, Matheus Sousa da Silva and Luis Henrique de Oliveira Malafaia, both 17, decided to help develop a different kind of class, using rap music to cover the curricular content for subjects like history, sociology and philosophy.

“First we made a mixtape with songs we thought were cool. But each lesson plan had to last 45 minutes, so we asked ourselves: how many classes will it be, how many songs do we need, what issues will we talk about? So we scrapped what we had and started over,” explains de Oliveira.

The learning curve was steep, recalls Raphael Paulino Gimenes, the teacher who guided them during the project. “They started to understand the teaching-learning process the moment they had to create lesson plans and think about education. They started to see education not only as students who need to make a certain grade, but also as active agents in the process.”

After a lot of research, the students prepared eight classes that covered, through rap, themes like racism, the environment, social issues, historical events, national politics and gender equality. In addition to the songs, the students also indicated activities for each lesson, which could include a debate, a presentation, film screenings, online research, and an unconventional assessment strategy. “For the last class we added an assignment for the teacher to use to evaluate the students: the production of a rhyme or graffiti related to the issues we covered,” recalls Malafaia.

BEYOND THE SCHOOL
Encouraged by the support they received from their teacher and their school, the students created curriculum in print and digital versions, which included the lesson plans, along with the songs and their lyrics. They then tested the efficacy of this method on a group of 3rd-year high school students.

“People really liked it: out of the 40 students, 37 were paying attention,” boasts de Oliveira. After this initial success, other teachers offered feedback on the material, and it was then taken beyond their school. Today “Viewed Through Rap” is used in three other schools in the region.

Teachers from some of those other schools have already gotten in touch with the group to talk about how their classes are going, Murillo says. “One of the teachers gave a class on racism and said that everyone really liked it. Rap is marginalized here, so the students didn’t realize that this style dealt with so many issues. The teacher was surprised to see even his rowdier students paying attention.”

The group has established a partnership with the borough’s mayoral  office and has distributed the education kit to eight municipal schools and two other technical schools. And the students’ goal is to take it further, creating a discussion group on Facebook and a blog to expand on the lesson plans. They also want to include other styles, like reggae and baile funk.

“The most transformative aspect is the use of rap to talk about the world, our reality, our problems. The students have learned a lot, especially about managing and executing projects, as well as achieving goals,” concludes Gimenes.

 

The A Visão do Rap (Viewed through Rap) project was one of the winners of the 2017 Design for Change Challenge. Organized by Alana in Brazil, Design for Change encourages children and young people to transform their realities, recognizing them as the protagonists of their own stories of change. The initiative is part of a global movement that started in India and is now present in 65 countries, inspiring over 2.2 million children and youngsters around the world.