“Dear Tupac, You speak to me.” Recruiting hip-hop as curriculum at a school for pregnant and parenting teens

Abstract

This article provides a rich representation of how in-school practices that recruit students’ “out-of-school” literacies, such as hip-hop, can be used as critical bridges in students’ learning. Hip-hop, conceptualized in this article as an “outof- school” literacy, works as a vehicle for curricular change at Eastview School for Pregnant and Parenting Teens. In so doing, such literacy learning can be a tool for social action. Because the literacy learning of “at risk” students, as the students who attend Eastview School for Pregnant and Parenting Teens are labeled, is often described through remedial or basic skills models of instruction, it is imperative that researchers document curricular change that challenges prevailing assumptions about the learning of “at risk” students.