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- dEsPeraTe cRaNky -
LOS ANGELES:
The class of eighth graders at a Los Angeles middle school tap their rulers and nod their heads to the rhythm of the rap video projected on a screen. It's not Snoop Dogg or Jay-Z.
It's their math teacher, LaMar Queen, using rhyme to help them memorize seemingly complicated algebra and in the process improve their grades. "It gets stuck in your head," says Cindy Martinez, a 14-year-old whose math grade went from a C-average to a B.
Queen, 26, is now known at Los Angeles Academy as the rap teacher, but his fame has spread far beyond the 2,200-student school in this gritty neighborhood. He's won a national award and shows teachers and parents how to use rap to reach children.
"Math is a bad word in a lot of households," he says. "But if we put it in a form that kids enjoy, they'll learn."
Queen is doing what many veteran educators have done — using students' music to connect with them.
Queen's math raps came about by chance. Two months after starting at LA Academy in 2007 — his first teaching job — he was stung when kids told him his class was boring. They told him he resembled singer Kanye West and challenged him to rap.
Little did they know Queen has been rapping since the seventh grade. Queen wrote a rap song 'Slope Intercept.' None of his raps are in the Top 40, but "Mean, Median, Mode and Range," "Polynomials," and "Quadratic Formulove Song" are chartbusters here.
The class of eighth graders at a Los Angeles middle school tap their rulers and nod their heads to the rhythm of the rap video projected on a screen. It's not Snoop Dogg or Jay-Z.
It's their math teacher, LaMar Queen, using rhyme to help them memorize seemingly complicated algebra and in the process improve their grades. "It gets stuck in your head," says Cindy Martinez, a 14-year-old whose math grade went from a C-average to a B.
Queen, 26, is now known at Los Angeles Academy as the rap teacher, but his fame has spread far beyond the 2,200-student school in this gritty neighborhood. He's won a national award and shows teachers and parents how to use rap to reach children.
"Math is a bad word in a lot of households," he says. "But if we put it in a form that kids enjoy, they'll learn."
Queen is doing what many veteran educators have done — using students' music to connect with them.
Queen's math raps came about by chance. Two months after starting at LA Academy in 2007 — his first teaching job — he was stung when kids told him his class was boring. They told him he resembled singer Kanye West and challenged him to rap.
Little did they know Queen has been rapping since the seventh grade. Queen wrote a rap song 'Slope Intercept.' None of his raps are in the Top 40, but "Mean, Median, Mode and Range," "Polynomials," and "Quadratic Formulove Song" are chartbusters here.
