Life Soundtrack: What Goes Around

If Brooklyn was my introduction to life after college, Philadelphia was where I cut my teeth -- in theatre, in teaching and in life. I was working a part-time gig at an elementary charter school off of 9th street market in South Philly when one of the kids' parents offered a higher paying opportunity to work with his community center. Situated on Washington Avenue, his center dealt with adjudicated youth. They needed a group leader to mentor a motley crew of teens who had survived run-ins with the law. Instead of sending them over to juvie, they were sent to this program. No problem, I thought. I had worked with a tough crew of underserved youths in Brooklyn. I'll dazzle them with my arsenal of arts-integrated lessons, connect with them over film and poetry and inspire them to change the world around them. But like most of my educational experiences, I had no idea how in over my head I would be and how completely misinformed I was.

Tabz was the senior member of the group. He had sold crack since he was 13 because that's what all the oldheads did. Dane was an Italian kid who fronted like he wasn't (most likely because assimilation spared him a good, daily ass-kicking). Phat was a Cambodian kid who took every opportunity to promote his affiliation with the Bloods. Jazmine was a big girl of 16 who wore very little clothes and always brought candy. Yassan and Javon were brothers of different fathers; neither one could read past third grade level.

And then there was Jacob Bright. He was guilty of truancy. Why go to school when it's less dangerous on the streets, he argued. Jacob came in late and high (when he did come). On the days he was present, he would come slumped over, sit away from everyone else and bop his head to the tunes playing in his head. He wore the same thing every day -- black long-sleeve shirt and black jeans. No one in the group cared to talk to him and he cared nothing for them. Just putting in his time.

On one evening, I successfully engaged the group in a discussion about their favorite music artists. All of them cited hip-hop artists and sang the praises of Eminem, Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Jacob offered up Nas, but the others smirked, saying he was a sell-out and irrelevant. I printed off some lyrics of their most popular tracks and began a lesson on similes and metaphors. Just as I had suspected, most of them had never sat down to decipher the lyrics that they could recite by heart. But Jacob had. In fact, he ground the class to a halt when he spoke up about Eminem's "The Way I Am." Everyone including me -- we listened intently as Jacob discussed Em's point about the Columbine massacre and how the public was content to dismiss the shooters once they found a bad guy in Marilyn Manson's music. The other kids didn't even know what Columbine was.

After that, I never left Jacob alone. And he didn't leave us alone either. He started attending regularly and started participating regularly in classroom discussions. I also started noticing that he had stopped slumping. When I inquired, he informed me that he had stopped smoking pot and had applied for some jobs. He had started writing and kept a small journal is his pocket. Tabz and him had become friends outside of the center and they were starting to record some tracks together.

Before I left the program to pursue a year-long directing fellowship, Jacob presented me with a burned CD of his favorite Nas tracks. He told me that what was on that CD would tell me a lot about his station in life. And truth be told, up until then, hip-hop and I were not friends. I didn't speak the language; I was strictly a guitar-bass-drums devotee. But it's roughly six years later and that well-worn CD still gets play. And the lessons in it are something to behold and rediscover time and time again. All at once, they are angering, frustrating, enlightening, challenging, saddening, puzzling... very much like Jacob, who like the best students I've worked with (and so much of the reason why I love working in education), taught me more about the world than I could have ever aspired to teach him.

The track featured here is Nas' "What Goes Around." It informs me of so many of the students I've had the privilege to work with -- the world they inhabit, the consequences that they were born into and the obstacles that they work to overcome. The opening notes set the scene for one amazing rant from one of America's most gifted MC's.