Dreaming With Hip Hop Pedagogy: “Yeah, That's Just Good (Culturally Relevant, Anti‐Racist) Teaching”

ABSTRACT This article emerges from a cross‐racial, cross‐cultural partnership between a Black male teacher educator who specializes in Hip Hop ELA pedagogies and a White female ELA teacher committed to anti‐racist teaching. Our discussion centers on the question: What if we assumed an “inquiry stance” to discover how Hip Hop‐based approaches to the teaching and learning of ELA can advance the academic and the anti‐racist skills of Asian and White students in a suburban middle school? The study advances research at the intersections of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Hip Hop Pedagogy, and anti‐racist teaching by sharing victory narratives and cautionary tales related to the cultural‐political and pedagogical dilemmas associated with a White teacher's engagement of Black pedagogies with non‐Black students. We offer these stories so that dreamers keep dreaming about “good teaching” and avoid the traps that befall the fantasizers and sleepwalkers amidst the current political nightmare.