At 6:52 one Friday morning last semester, as I was on my way to a local high school to meet my Foundations of Urban Ed class for our weekly field experience, I got the following instructions from one of my students via text message:
Here are your lyrics for the rap. Memorize them and don’t mess it up!
My name is Doc P. and I’m so official
I’m here to regulate and I’ll blow that whistle
So start us up, we’re ticking bombs
Just like Twitter, we’re the bomb.com
Here’s a little background: The previous week during field observations in a West Philadelphia high school, my seven students had correctly assessed that 10th graders are not very awake and ready to learn at the unethical hour of 7:30 a.m. So my students — some of them being from Philly themselves — decided they should sing, dance, rap and take other creative risks to get the 10th graders up and ready to learn. And as I found out on my way to school that morning, that week I was in on it, too.
