Introduction

In 2001, Ms. Woodbury, the master teacher and “other mother” to multiple generations of students at Pineview Elementary school mentored me during my student teaching in her third-grade classroom in Tallahassee, FL. She had the students nobody else wanted in their class. She loved them and they thrived in her care. There was a male student who would sit in the back of the room with his head down all the time. I asked her, “Why are we allowing this kid to sleep in class?” With her infinite pedagogical wisdom, she said, “Baby, if that boy wants to sleep, you need to let him sleep! You don’t know what’s going on in his life.” After weeks like this, word got around that this same child was contemplating suicide.

The principal and Ms. Woodbury called me to the office to break the news, they asked me to intervene, saying, “you’re a Black man, he’s a Black boy. Do something!”

Welcome to the Paragon Project. It is the culmination of my life’s work. Here is the story of how it happened.

Elementary School (Tallahassee, FL)

At the time, all I really knew was music. I had studied classical music at Xavier University while pursuing my professional interest in hip hop independent of my traditional studies. As a teen, I had been a part of a program called The Self-Esteem Team, under the leadership of Mr. Alfred C. Ray, a master teacher, mentor, and father figure. The Self-Esteem Team was a performance-based group that made it possible for me to work with other African American kids from all over my city on critical issues facing our community.

I grew up in that program and ultimately became the Coordinator of the program which provided me with invaluable leadership, teaching, and education administration experience. The program held critical thinking, academic excellence, and substance prevention as its core tenets. Through this program, I experienced a diversity of black youth who came from different social classes and life experiences. This psychographic model brought kids together from different socio-economic backgrounds to think critically about our lives and the communities and the issues we faced.

The Self Esteem Team meshed the performance aspirations of its participants with the critical thinking and push for academic excellence that enabled the program to develop leaders and educate the whole of us, as students. It was because of this program that I would later consider what meshing socio-emotional wellness and music across economic classes could look like as a program. I knew music was a powerful tool that could both motivate, educate, and transcend cultural differences. I challenged the kids in that 3rd-grade classroom to write a song called, “I Love Myself.” Ms. Woodbury’s entire class was engaged. We would also do spelling and math problems to drum patterns on my newly purchased beat machines.

Suddenly, all the other kids in the school were upset they weren’t in this class with all these cool innovative practices happening as music and energy flowed out of the classroom into the hallways. As a result of their hard work, I promised the kids if they earned a score of 100% on their math and spelling assessments, we’d go to a recording studio and record their “I Love Myself” song. My work with Ms. Woodbury’s class 20 years ago became the genesis of my career.

Bassline Entertainment Middle School - (Wilmington, DE)

After hearing the, “I love myself” song performed by Ms. Woodbury’s class, on the nationally syndicated Bobby Jones Gospel radio show, professor Dr. Shuaib Meacham contacted me about the prospects of pursuing my doctorate at The University of Delaware once my student teaching was completed. Unfamiliar with The University of Delaware, a flight was arranged where I would visit the school and meet the students Dr. Meacham was working with. During my visit, I was introduced to Ms. Bishop, a middle school English teacher at a local middle school who was pursuing her Master’s degree at The University of Delaware, where Dr. Meacham was her professor.

Ms. Bishop noticed that many of her African American students were failing her English class. In some cases, there were students in her class that failed, not only her class but their ​grade level ​ multiple times. She noticed that some of these same students would congregate around the lunch table and ‘freestyle” rap and demonstrate a mastery of the English language that they did not demonstrate in her class.

Ms. Bishop asked Dr. Meacham if this was the type of alternative literacy he told her to seek out when appreciating the intellectual abilities of her urban students? Together, Ms. Bishop and Dr. Mecham began a spoken word poetry club with the students in the class as a way to cultivate their interest and remediate their performance in the class.

Appreciative of the gesture, many of the students participated in the poetry club but expressed to Dr. Meacham a desire to learn more about hip-hop culture. One student even wrote a business proposal to create a studio in the classroom that could run during lunch periods and study halls. Dr. Meacham asked if given my experience as a producer and educator, I could assist him and Ms. Bishop educate the students about hip-hop culture, with the underlying goal of improving their academic outcomes. It was initially through this collaboration, that both the Sound Vision Music Camp and Bassline Entertainment were born.

Bassline went on to record three albums and 100% of its membership earned admission to four-year colleges and universities. Bassline toured all over the United States, primarily at colleges and universities, and even toured in London and Sheffield England. They have opened for numerous Hip-Hop and R&B luminaries including, Little Brother, Busta Rhymes, Mary J. Blige, P-Diddy, and more. They were also featured in the famed Vote or Die Tour. One student earned a professional record contract, several students earned music-based scholarships. Students from this group have been featured in Scratch Magazine, The Source Magazine, Allhiphop.com, Vibe Magazine, and more.

The Pros - The Roots - (Philadelphia, PA)

It was because of Bassline’s success, that I was then asked to serve as an Assistant Artist Manager and A&R to Richard Nichols, Manager of The Roots. In that capacity, I worked as Mr. Nichols' protege and thought partner on the completion of several Roots albums including, “How I Got Over,” “Undun,” and “...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin.” I also was fortunate to work with Mr. Nichols on The Roots collaborative album with Mr. Al Green “Lay It Down”

After working with Bassline, and while working with Mr. Nichols and The Roots, I was hired as Dean of Students at Mastery Charter Thomas Campus in Philadelphia, PA while also serving as an Adjunct Professor at The University of Delaware. It was at Mastery Charter where along with Andrea Garner, Priyanka Rupani, LaToya Coley, and Miki Poy, we created Molding Gentlemen of Distinction (MGD) and Developing Independent Virtuous Adults (DIVAs).

The MGD and DIVAs program, while not music-based, implemented many of the socio-emotional wellness and leadership components that were foundational to Bassline Entertainment and Ms. Woodbury’s classroom before it. Once The Roots transitioned to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and then subsequently The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon I moved back to my hometown of Columbus, Ohio where I married my wonderful wife Angelett. I was hired as an Assistant Principal at KIPP Columbus where I served the young people who attended there for two years.

High School - The Paragon Project - Columbus, Ohio

In 2015, I was hired by Columbus City Schools to serve as an Assistant Principal at The Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, a college prep, performing and visual arts magnet high school. During my first year as an administrator, students at Fort Hayes expressed a desire to create an artistic response to the growing racial unrest. I envisioned a program that would mesh the collective principles of The Self-Esteem Team, Ms. Woodbury’s class, Bassline Entertainment, and MGD and DIVAs.This group would house a collective of musicians, artists, thinkers, and performers who through this entity would leverage student-created contemporary music to address social issues impacting youth. Then the products that this group creates could be shared with other practitioners around the country to educate them about the issues and ways to approach topics related to socio-emotional wellness with the populations they serve.

My work as a hip-hop educator started with Black boys, but my work today with the Paragon Project today involves Black and Brown students of all gender identities. If you asked the boys for a description of the music we create, they would tell you one of the recurring themes we address is women’s empowerment. In each group that I have worked with, it was a boy who was the genesis of the group emerging, but it’s the narrative of women that shaped the content created by the youth. As the students began to write, the young ladies brought a critical lens and depth to the writing by sharing the issues impacting them: mental health, suicide, abuse.

The Cultural Continuum

The Hip-hop cultural continuum I developed during my and work as a researcher and practitioner can teach us a lot about teaching and learning. It looks like a pyramid. On the bottom tier are the observers. Those are people who are on the outside of the culture—they see it, know it’s happening, but they’re situated outside of it. The next level is the consumer. That’s where most young people are. They create the culture or generate products from the culture, but they purchase the goods and resources emerging from the culture. Creators are at the top of the pyramid; they are the participants and natural resources of the culture. It’s the same with learning. When you have a kid listen to a song, they experience the song and form their understanding through one of these three lenses. When they create a song, they have a different appreciation of what’s involved in the process: a depth of knowledge. The goal is to shift them from being a consumer to a creator. This is even more critical when the images are toxic and destructive, if young people are simply consumers of this content, then their outcomes become reflective of the input. However, if you can provide ways to engage them critically and turn them from consumers of toxic information and content into creators of self-reflective and critical content, then transformation occurs. Hip hop education is not about watering down the content. Actually, the opposite is true: if you engage kids in knowledge and music creation, if you get the students to care, it’s going to be hard to turn off their passion. Today I travel the world with the brilliant young people of The Paragon Project, creating spaces for them to produce and perform youth-led music that educates others about their experiences.

The Paragon Project’s most recent album, Add-A-Lesson, is a concept album that follows the narrative of a fictional female African American high school student who fights through the layers of trauma that many young people tackle during her senior year. This album afforded members of The Paragon Project the opportunity to discuss issues that were critical and salient to their experience as young adults without having to wear the identity of those issues outwardly. This format allowed them to articulate their emotions through the narrative of the fictional lead character and thus create a platform that allows others regardless of their placement on the Hip-Hop Cultural Continuum to gain a deeper understanding of the realities facing urban youth. The Paragon Project is the culmination of the hard work of the students, their teachers, and the wonderful parents and families that collectively entrusted me with their dreams.

Sincerely,