This month, close to 100 ninth-graders began classes at the nation’s first public high school dedicated to hip-hop. At the Bronx School for Hip-Hop, students will learn about the culture, music and business of hip-hop, gain access to industry internships and college opportunities and will also learn core subjects through music and culturally rooted teaching. The school is the brainchild of foundational hip-hop education scholar, TC’s Christopher Emdin, Professor of Science Education and Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education, and alumnus Edmund Adjapong (Ph.D. ’17), Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Seton Hall University and Director of the Hip-Hop Culture, Equity and Excellence Academy. Emdin worked closely with a team of advisors — including former NYC schools chancellor Meisha Porter, Grammy-nominated producer Amadeus, District 9 Superintendent Harry Sherman and representatives from local organizations such as BronxNet, Windows of Hip Hop and the New York Yankees — to bring the school to life.
“[Hip-hop education] gives us an opportunity to engage with approaches to teaching that traditional schools don’t deem important enough,” says Emdin, who first proposed the school in 2019 and serves on its advisory board. “My heart and soul is in this work…and I'm fully invested in ensuring that the school is successful for those young people…. Hip-hop is a way of knowing and being whose potential is only familiar to those who know; in this school, we have educators, school leaders and an advisory board who know.”
A Bronx native and former classroom educator, Emdin is motivated by a desire to develop innovative pedagogies that better resonate with students by embracing their cultural expression. He found that music was an incredibly powerful learning tool, particularly for Black students. “Music and musicality is such a deep piece of Blackness that it may as well be a tangible artifact of the melanin in our bodies,” Emdin explains. “As a teacher in New York City Public Schools, [hip-hop] was the way I was able to connect with my students. We'd write rhymes together, we'd cipher together and it worked.” From there, Emdin expanded his personal practice into a globally-recognized field of study through his organization HipHopEd and built a community of like-minded scholars.
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(Photo courtesy of HipHopEd)
(Photo courtesy of HipHopEd)
(Photo courtesy of HipHopEd)
(Photo courtesy of HipHopEd)
The opening of the Bronx School of Hip-Hop marks an evolution of the field and of Emdin’s scholarship. He worked closely with Principal Jason Reyes to advise on leadership decisions and prepared the first cohort of teachers to apply the school’s central teaching philosophy, reality pedagogy — a method of instruction developed by Emdin where educators embrace the realities students often face and see them as assets that they can integrate into their curriculum.
Even the school’s design ethos is inspired by Emdin’s work. It builds upon his Collider classrooms project, which brought dynamic learning spaces that support students’ socioemotional needs in the post-pandemic era to 10 NYC public schools. He also ensured that the school will serve as a research site, appointing a scholar-in-residence with plans to offer opportunities to TC students and researchers from the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study.
While the school year has only just begun, Emdin is looking toward the future. “This will be the first hip-hop high school in the world, but it won't be the only. It's going to grow. I feel it.”