With Hip Hop curriculum, Just Think teaches students technology and digital communication skills

Just Think teaches young people to lead healthy, responsible and independent lives in a culture highly impacted by media. Founded in 1995 as a response to the ever-increasing deluge of messages youth received from popular media, Just Think has successfully created and delivered media arts and technology education locally, nationally and internationally. Just Think’s programs have reached nearly 7,000 students, teachers and parents.

Challenge

Just Think envisioned a curriculum that enabled students to:

• Foster arts and technology career-building skills
• Understand the historical and social context of the music and images that surround them
• Debunk stereotypes of Hip Hop culture and other youth issues

Project

ZeroDivide funded $25,000 toward Flipping the Script, a collaborative project between Just Think, Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology and Thurgood Marshall High School. Flipping the Script meets California teaching standards in English, History, and Social Science and includes:

• A 30-page guidebook, with lesson plans and activities
• A companion video and DVD
• Extensive online resources

Results

In 2005, 100% of BAYCAT participants graduated and are now pursuing higher education. Flipping the Script has expanded Baycat’s successful after-school training programs. Using Hip-Hop as a focus for their own media projects, students create poetry, raps, CDs, videos, websites and digital artwork. This work fosters arts and technology career-building skills, including interview techniques, digital still and video photography, audio-recording, story-boarding and digital editing.

The curriculum also teaches students how to showcase their own media projects through school fairs, community exhibitions, film festivals, the Internet, and other forums. Audiences see Hip Hop through the eyes of the youth who develop, design and produce original works.