Educational Success with Hip-Hop

Dr. Merv Jenkins from Renaissance Learning joins us to share his transformative journey with Flocabulary, an innovative platform that uses hip-hop to revolutionize education. Discover how Dr. Merv's partnership with Grammy-winning producer 9th Wonder in the early 2000s led to the creation of engaging educational content that makes vocabulary acquisition exciting and effective. Dr. Merv Jenkins, drawing from his experiences as a high school assistant principal, discusses the importance of bridging the gap between "word rich" and "word poor" students, highlighting how Flocabulary is changing classroom dynamics and improving student outcomes.

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Transcript

Devin Pintozzi 0:02

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. We are here at LaCue I am Devin Pintozzi, your host, and we are here with Merv Jenkins, with Renaissance Learning, here to talk about some of the exciting things they're doing and how that process all got started. Hello Merv, how are you today?

Merv Jenkins 0:21

Dev doing good. Thank you for having us do this, man.

Devin Pintozzi 0:24

Wonderful. Tell us what Renaissance Learning is doing here at Nearpod or at LaCue.

Merv Jenkins 0:31

Absolutely.

Devin Pintozzi 0:32

And all of that process.

Merv Jenkins 0:34

Well Devin. Quite frankly, we want folks to know about the umbrella of product solutions that we offer for school districts around the country and around the world, but two specific ones. I know you spoke with my Julie, earlier about Nearpod. Yes, and she represents the FloCab platform. I represent the FloCab platform. We love the idea of bringing something relevant to students and really engaging them in their learning, so that's why I'm here specifically.

Devin Pintozzi 1:06

All right, can you tell us a little bit about Flocabulary?

Merv Jenkins 1:09

Yeah, Flocabulary began as an engagement tool many, many moons ago. I'm talking early 2000,. Like 2003. I was a high school assistant principal at the time and I had

Devin Pintozzi 1:22

Oh, where did you teach?

Merv Jenkins 1:23

Well, I taught in Charleston, south Carolina, and I was a high school assistant principal a nd principal in the North Carolina area, specifically Chatham County and Chapel Hill-Carlborough City Schools.

Devin Pintozzi 1:35

Wow.

Merv Jenkins 1:37

So I did this interview on NPR it was nationally broadcasted called the Rapping Principal and these two guys from New York. They heard the interview and they eventually made contact and said hey, we're going to be launching this company using hip-hop music in the classroom. Would you be willing to write some songs for it? So myself, a good friend of mine, 9th Wonder, who has produced for he's a Grammy-winning producer Jay-Z, beyonce, you name it 9th and I launched some of the very first Flow Cab content for that company. But again, that was 20-plus years ago. Yeah, man, good times.

Devin Pintozzi 2:17

Wow, that is wonderful. And so what are you hoping to bring to LaCue and what are you hoping to get out of LaCue that you're going to bring out here to other places?

Merv Jenkins 2:26

If I got a microphone and some music, I'll probably entertain with some little on-the-spot performances.

Devin Pintozzi 2:31

Nice,

Merv Jenkins 2:32

I like to freestyle as people are walking by. I call their names out, put the name badges in the rap and all that good stuff.

Devin Pintozzi 2:38

Oh wow.

Merv Jenkins 2:38

And I'll really just talk to the crowd about what Flocabulary can do for your students, because it really is a game changer. Man. Like, when it comes to vocabulary acquisition, people sleep on the whole idea that you have students who are word rich and students who are word poor, and that's just the reality of it. And if we don't get the word poor students up to the word rich category, life as an adult tends to be a whole lot more difficult, and there's a lot of research behind that. So that's what I like to think that we're doing and how we're making a difference.

Devin Pintozzi 3:08

That's wonderful and what an engaging way, using hip-hop, to get all of that done.

Merv Jenkins 3:12

Bingo.

Devin Pintozzi 3:14

So if the audience here at LaCue would like to see some places where they could see clips of your work, do you know where to send them?

Merv Jenkins 3:20

I mean just go to the FloCabulary website it's just www. flocabulary. com and there's an All About link at the very bottom. You can pull up some of the research we've done over the years around the platform and from there you can find your way to different blogs that have been posted over the years and eventually run across some of my work as well, if you're really really cruising deep in social media.

Devin Pintozzi 3:45

That is awesome, merv. Thank you so much.

Merv Jenkins 3:47

Thank you

Devin Pintozzi 3:48

Once again. This is Merv Jenkins with Flowcabulary Renaissance Learning. Thank you so much for being part of our podcast today.

Merv Jenkins 3:56

Dev, thank you.

Devin Pintozzi 3:57

Thank you.