No abstract

The High School for Recording Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota, serves students who’ve had trouble in more traditional schools. Yet, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the school was able to maintain, and even exceed, its prepandemic metrics of achievement. Michael Lipset and Linda Nathan attribute this success to the school’s unique staffing structure. Instead of having content teachers attempt to meet the wide array of student needs on their own, the school takes a team-based approach, with traditional certified teachers serving as content advisers who manage student learning and other team members (many of whom have similar backgrounds as the students) addressing students’ personal needs. All faculty, no matter their specific role, are called facilitators of learning, but they focus on different ways of engaging students.

No abstract

We study the role of Hip-Hop teaching artists in a school change initiative. A school-university-community partnership in a Canadian city, the project sought to develop a school-wide focus on the “urban arts” for student learning and wellbeing. The experiences of nine teaching artists over four years, examined through the lens of Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy, offer insight into the roles of Hip-Hop based teaching artists in a nontraditional, arts-based, school change initiative.

The author examines a federally funded internship program he organized while serving as the director of the High School for Recording Arts Los Angeles program. The school paid students to operate their own record label. Under the American Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, approved organizations provide paid, for-credit internships to young people who meet the definition of opportunity youth. Through this partnership, students learned real-world skills, gained hands-on experience, and built their resumes. The author experienced a shift in his professional praxis from school leader to creative pedagogue. During the internship, the school experienced increased student attendance and enrolment, suggesting the paid internship resulted in increased opportunities for student learning. The author covers similar opportunities across the US and Canada.