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CHRISTOPHER EMDIN: Success for me is in the stories of when kids see themselves as scientists.
[Music]
My most recent research has been focused on science mindedness and this science mindedness
idea is just looking at the skills, traits, dispositions, attributes of the most prolific
scientists of our time.
What makes Einstein Einstein?
Or what Kacooli Kacooli?
Or what made Niels Bohr Niels Bohr?
We realize that they're inquisitive, that they have keen observation skills.
That they're anti-establishment, they're anti-authoritarian.
That they're deeply reflective, that they draw seeming disparate ideas together through
metaphor and analogy.
The work was then to find where else do we find a population that exhibits these same
characteristics and I find them within hip hop.
I find them in rappers.
I find the in Nas and Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar.
I find them in the young people in schools today who are engaged in the Science Genius
project that all the skills you want to assign you find in rappers so that's why we're doing
this project Science Genius because Science Genius allows young people to their science
mindedness as a thing that can help them to be successful in science and so in a nutshell
that's Science Genius and the Science Genius battles.
Genius is Generating I-U-S—Interest in Urban Science and battles is the rap battle but
it also stands for Bringing Attention to Transforming Teaching and Learning and Engagement in Science.
And the idea is just that.
That we want to generate interest in urban schools or in urban science by bringing attention
to how we transform teaching learning and engagement with young people.
So in hip hop a battle is when you have one emcee versus one emcee.
They have crafted their raps, they come with their crew and they are going to compete to
show who is the best rapper and so we've taken this idea of the hip hop battle and extended
that to Science Genius battle where you have young people who will go and study their science
text and information.
In their schools, they will be able to learn science through rhyme and craft raps that
are immersed in science.
These are young people who are listening to hip hop, writing hip hop, living and breathing
hip hop already and we're just merging science into that.
If you've noticed, I've said we, and we and we because this is a partnership with GZA
from the Wu Tang Clan.
GZA's story is the story of so many young people.
He was pushed out of school because it didn't capture his imagination.
It didn't capture his interest and so he is so deeply entrenched in this project because
he wants to change the narrative for kids like him.
GZA is a science geek as well.
Deeply immersed in science, inquisitive about the universe and he is gonna be like coach,
supporting kids and writing their science raps, teaching them what the art of rhyme
and hip hop is.
We've said from the beginning we are not going to accept nursery school rhymes.
You're not gonna come in here and say "Hey, I'm here to play, it's DNA."
We're turning up the responsibility for the young people to engage in hip hop differently.
We're changing the narrative of commercial hip hop.
We have 10 schools so far.
In each of those 10 schools, we'll have science battles where each school will declare their
science genius.
The science genius in each of those schools will battle against geniuses in other schools
until we have this one big event.
It's gonna be the 10 science geniuses from these 10 selected schools.
There will be rappers in the audience, there will be scientists in the audience, there
will be educators in the audience, there will be media in the audience and we will judge
to see who the top science genius is and that person will be the science genius of New York
City.
We've picked schools where people wouldn't stay late or these kids are doing great because
they've always done great.
They're prototypical New York public schools.
Students with low socioeconomic status.
Neighborhoods who are struggling.
High incarceration rates in those neighborhoods.
We've gone to the places where a lot of people don't go.
We've gone to the places where the young people need us the most.
Everyone asks me about how I gauge success.
What kind of pre-tests and post-tests would you use?
What kind of comparative groups will you use?
Y'know, I will follow the protocol of existing research to measure how kids engage in classrooms,
if they have increased test scores or not.
The real story is when a kid says to me, man I was writing this rap and I wasn't getting
any information and I was up all night researching.
The real story is when a kid says, y'know I was reading the New York Times, science
times on Tuesday and I was intrigued about this article.
Success for me is when kids see themselves as scientists.
Conventional methods for measuring success will be used, but to me real research is in
the rich and thick descriptions of what works, what doesn't work, how it works and how kids
experience this approach differently.
I'm Christopher Emdin, you need to subscribe to THNKR like yesterday!