This post is sponsored by SXSWedu.
In honor of Black History Month, we want to highlight some of this year’s SXSWedu sessions that highlight educational topics and issues that affect Black communities. Two Featured Sessions are particularly salient towards this topic, including “Can Hip Hop Save Us?” and “10 & Change: Changing the Narrative for Black Boys”.
Educational equality is a top track at SXSWedu this year, and while we celebrate achievements by Black Americans, we hope to facilitate the exploration of the Black experience in schools and classrooms at this year’s SXSWedu.
Can Hip Hop Save Us? Youth and School Culture
Regardless of one’s nationality, ethnicity, and/or social class, everyone is familiar with, and has knowledge of, hip-hop. Yet, hip-hop culture, which is youth culture, is stigmatized, marginalized and prohibited from school settings. If youth culture is deemed irrelevant, does that affect their academic achievement and their self worth? Is there a correlation to the high school graduation rate? This panel includes teachers, professors, and popular rappers who will pose this essential question: Can hip-hop’s presence in social media and pop culture be leveraged to prepare students for careers and college?
10 & Change: Changing the Narrative for Black Boys
In 2006, Tim King opened the first Urban Prep campus with a simple goal: improve the educational outcomes for African-American males. Since then, Urban Prep has achieved a 100% college acceptance rate for its graduates, grown from one school to a network of schools, created an innovative program supporting college students, launched a workforce development program and served over 2,000 young African-American males. On the 10th anniversary of opening the first school, Tim reflects on his journey as an educator, what it took to build the country’s first network of public charter high schools for boys and the secret to Urban Prep’s success. (Hint: there’s no secret)!
The SXSWedu® Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, film screenings, early stage startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a platform for collaboration, SXSWedu works to promote creativity and social change.
For a look at more of this year’s sessions at SXSWedu, visit our website!