Flocabulary cofounder Blake Harrison shares his program with students and staff at Sunset Avenue during a visit to the school Thursday.
Photo by Katie Holland
On Thursday, March 11, two members of the Flocabulary educational materials company were in Clinton to introduce their program to selected students, faculty and staff at Sunset Avenue and Clinton High schools.
Flocabulary, which utilizes hip-hop in the classroom, is the brainchild of one of the co-founders of the company, Blake Harrison.
The idea for Flocabulary first came to founder/lyricist Harrison in high school. A good student,who still struggled to memorize facts for tests, he wondered why it was so easy to remember lines to his favorite rap songs but so difficult to memorize academic information. Harrison said he realized that if a rapper released an album that defined SAT vocabulary words, students would have a fun and effective way to prepare for all-important test.
After studying English at the University of Pennsylvania and working on his rapping at gatherings around Philadelphia, Harrison moved out to San Francisco. While there, he met Alex Rappaport, a musician and producer. Rappaport had studied music at Tufts University, and was now writing tracks for indie films and TV commercials and producing ring tones for cell phones. Both he and Harrison found jobs at a local Italian restaurant to help pay the bills.
The duo launched Flocabulary.com in November 2004. Today, Flocabulary programs are being used in more than 12,000 schools, and Flocabulary.com is visited by more than one million people each year. Looking ahead, Flocabulary will continue to expand their educational offerings and has plans to take their music into the visual medium by creating engaging videos for TV and DVD and the web. Defined as much by their success as by their committed social mission, Flocabulary is poised to reach more students than ever, putting smiles on their faces and A’s on their report cards.
Flocabulary is a play off the 1970s School House Rock program that aired on television. “We have been associated with School House Rock and are big fans of the program, but they do sound as if they were recorded in 1978. Flocabulary is a more contemporary take on that program,” shared Harrison. “We love Hip-Hop and we create Hip-Hop, and we truly have the desire to held young people, especially those who may be struggling to improve. We feel that Hip-Hop may reach them a little better than, say, opera.”
D Stroy is one of more than a dozen artists that create the specific Hip-Hop songs that are specific to Flocabulary’s curriculum. His name, he said, doesn’t exemplify his actions merely his desire to destroy ignorance. “I destroy evil with love,” laughed the 34-year-old hip-hopper.
“We don’t let the artist just sing anything,” stated the creative director. “We give them the vocabulary words that are derived from the SAT and state required testing, and the artist use them in songs that will fit the lesson plans of our program.”
“The artist, like myself and the educational specialist, get together to develop the songs for use in this program,” said D Stroy. “Even though there is an incentive to have different artist featured on the CDs, that is not what it is about for us. It is the lesson that is highlighted to benefit the kids.”
Harrison stated that is crucial that children are engaged in learning and that the instruction has to be relevant and current in addition to keeping the students’ attention in order for that student to learn.
Winifred Murphy, Clinton City Schools director of After School Services, said that was one reason why Flocabulary program would be used in the city schools. “We have already started utilizing the program at Sunset Avenue but have not gotten the program started at the high school yet. The younger students have really been absorbing it,” stated Murphy.
According to the director, Flocabulary will initially be used with the after school programs. During Thursday’s presentation, students in accelerated curriculum, honors courses, struggling in classes and at risk students, were targeted at the high school. “With the children today it is so different from even just 10 years ago as to how you educate them. We have to find ways to instruct our young people that will interest them and, at the same time, compete with all the new and ever increasing technology bombarding them,” Murhpy said.
The program, she said, would be utilized in grades 3,4, 5 and 8 and will primarily be used in the after school programs as an alternative learning strategy at Butler Avenue and Sunset Avenue. She also stated that plans were to use the program with the alternative students in the 8th grade and a small number of 9th graders. “We are hoping to increase test scores of those Level I and Level II scoring students. Teachers are doing a wonderful job during the day but time does not permit them to utilize the program to supplement the Standard Course of Study. We are using the Standard Course of Study also but are using alternative strategies to meet those goals. We are attempting to compliment what the classroom teacher is already doing in their classes.”
The 21st Century Programs at Butler and Sunset reaches approximately 150 students currently and that number will increase another 50 students when additional grant money has been released. At the high school level in the Dark Horse Academy, Murphy explained that students are able to recover credits in certain courses that they may have failed. Remediate opportunities are also available for students who are having problems in classes they are taking. “The Clinton High School staff and administrators are working really hard to make our students successful. We are really working hard to prevent our students from dropping out and some of the preliminary reports I have heard are looking good.”
Flocabulary is just one of the many programs that are currently being used by the Clinton City Schools in hopes or raising students learning abilities as they prepare for the future.
For more information regarding Flocabulary, visit www.flocabulary.com.
To contact Billy Todd, call 910-592-8137 ext. 117 or e-mail sigeneral@myclintonnc.com.
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