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by Ben
Ron Gubitz lives his life to the beat of a hip-hop song. The sounds
of learning and laughter from his students are the bass. The experiences
of his favorite hip-hop artists key the notes. The wisdom of icons
like Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr. inspire the lyrics. Drive
up to Vashon High School in St. Louis, Missouri and you can find
this beat echoing in Ron’s classroom.
To say Ron Gubitz loves hip-hop is to say a fish loves water. According
to Ron, “Hip-hop begins the second your heart starts beating.
The bass drum is the beat that really runs the whole world. And
we all feel it, and we all crave it, whether we know it or not.”
I have never spent much time listening to hip-hop before. It’s
way different from James Taylor or Bob Dylan, but I like the sound.
Fortunately, before I leave St. Louis, Ron makes me a CD with his
current favorites. It’s called Get Up & Crazy.
I’m listening to it now and it’s helping me find a good
rhythm with which to describe him.
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Often when people don’t understand cultures, they don’t
embrace them. 26 year-old Ron Gubitz is not one of these people.
He consciously embraces. Ron has thrown cultural and racial barriers
out the window. He teaches 11th and 12th grade English at an all
black school. Ron is white and Jewish, and may never fully understand
the black experience, but that doesn’t inhibit him or his
students. Sheril, one of his 11th graders describes Ron as, “Funny
and easy to talk to because he understands kids and he knows how
to talk to them. He's energetic, always. Even on his downfall days
he's happy. He knows how to make people smile, even when they don't
want to. He makes learning fun, cause man, its can be BORING. Also,
we get along because we're both Geminis.”
6:37 am Vashon High School
I’m headed back to high school. Well, only kind of. Vashon
is very different from the predominantly white suburban high school
I attended.
There are 1,400 kids at Vashon High School and every morning each
one of them goes through the metal detectors at the front entrance.
When I arrived, I was ready to empty my pockets, take off my shoes
and walk through, but the security guards didn’t ask me to.
I also wasn’t padded down like the students entering alongside
me. My ability to just stroll in unsettled me. It’s harder
for a student to get into Vashon, than it is for me. Not looking
back, I walk up the main flight of stairs to Ron’s second
floor classroom. A sign on the door reads, Professional Dialect
Only. When I enter I see Ron walking around the class dragging
his left foot behind him getting ready for the day ahead. He’s
limping because he recently had surgery due to a knee injury suffered
while running a marathon for Team in Training in Dublin, Ireland
to benefit leukemia research. Ron’s curly-fry black hair is
bouncing around with each step. On a tall day, he’s two inches
below six feet. It’s a dress down day at Vashon so Ron is
wearing blue jeans, a grey sweater, and a pair of gray New Balance
sneakers. In the background, I can hear some hip-hop tunes beating
away. Today it happens to be a mix of Brother Ali, Blackalicious,
and Outkast. After acknowledging my entrance with a “what’s
up?” Ron grabs a chair from a desk and steps up on it to hang
recent student projects on the wall. He explains to me that they
illustrate the figurative works of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God.” Just a few minutes before first
bell, I ask Ron about the state of American education. I want to
get a feel of what he thinks before I see him teach. He responds,
“Each day my idealism is confirmed by the 300 eyeballs I encounter.
Kids who fight through poor healthcare, abusive justice and economic
systems, and the vestiges of slavery where learning could mean your
death. My idealism is also crushed daily as I see what I term the
criminal inequities, mishaps, and downright chaos that lives at
our schools. Five principals in five years. No major sports team
would expect success with that turnover. No business would either.
Why do we allow it to happen with our schools?” The last bell
rings and we’re still waiting for some students to clear the
detectors.
To his students Ron is known as Mr. G., or sometimes just Gub.
As students arrive and greet him, I sit down in the corner and prepare
myself for two 100-minute classes. Directly above me on the wall
are charts that look like something you’d expect some Wall
Street broker to be analyzing. These charts have nothing to do with
money; they monitor the total tardies and absences of students in
each of Ron’s classes. From the peaks and valleys of the Magic
Marker drawn lines, these charts fluctuate as much as the Dow Jones
Index. Attendance at Vashon is half the battle.
7:20 am
First class about to start.
In a commanding voice, Ron declares, “BOOM BAP IN
YOUR AREA.” The kids who are mulling into the class
quiet down. Apparently, this is a familiar message that gets the
kids’ attention. Once there is complete silence, the whole
class shouts in unison “AMERICAN LIT HYSTERIA.”
Ron’s first class, American Literature, has just begun.
Today’s lesson is on proper paragraph structure. It is one
of the many topics that Ron has to cover to help his students pass
the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). The MAP designates five levels
to measure student aptitude: Step 1 is substantially behind state
standards and expectations, 2 is progressing (beginning knowledge
of basic concepts), 3 is nearing proficient (student understand
concepts, struggle in application), 4 is proficient (desired level.
indicates grade level mastery called for by state standards), and
5 is advanced.
To put Vashon and Ron’s job in perspective here are some
statistics:
1. 2005: St. Louis, Missouri, and Vashon
Step 1: StL 45% of students vs. Missour 17%i vs. Vashon 66.2%
Proficient: StL 6.2% vs. Missour 22.2%i vs. Vashon 0%
2. 2005: Vashon
Step 1: 66.2%
Progressing: 21.2 %
Nearing proficient: 12.6%
Proficient: 0.0 %
Advanced: 0.0%
3. Clayton, a public high school in a high-income community in the
city scored 38% of students in Nearing Proficient and Proficient
categories, 2.5% in Advanced, and only 9.4% Step 1
One tactic Ron uses to combat these statistics, is interweaving
the common ground love that he and his students have for hip-hop
into the lesson. For example, before outlining paragraph structure,
Ron tells the class, “Okay, we’re going to do the paragraph
song in a couple of minutes so warm up your mouth...I’d love
a little beat box in the morning to go with my coffee. Who can beat
for us today?” A student volunteers, cups both his hands to
his mouth and begins to lay down the beat. Soon, the students and
Ron begin to rap. It goes something like this:
Reasons…………diggy diggy diggy
diggy.
Details…...
Fact!
Fact!
Reasons…………diggy diggy diggy
diggy.
Details…...
Fact!
Fact!
Ereh ereh ereh………
Examples!
They run through it a couple more times. I’m impressed. It’s
catchy. Despite clamors from some of the students for an encore,
Ron decides that they’ve done enough rapping and now it’s
time to apply the elements of the song to some paragraph practice.
He tells the class that the subject of the day is “Different
Sneaker Brands” and they are to explain the reasons why one
might be more preferable than another. The students are to use what
they know about sneakers to fill in the details, examples, facts,
and reasons to make an argument.
After giving them five minutes to think it through, Ron walks to
the board to go over the exercise with the class. Ron calls on one
student who chose not to participate in the song for an answer.
The student replies, “I don’t know.” Ron shoots
right back, “We don’t take ‘I don’t knows.’
Think about it and I’ll come back to you in 30 seconds.”
Ron then asks the class, “How much does a pair of Nike Forces
cost?” A couple of students shout out “$85.” Ron
replies, “Okay, that’s a little much.” The kids
all laugh. He then goes on a slight hip-hop tangent. “You
know,” Ron says using a quote from the Beastie Boys, “Rock
my ADIDAS, never rock FILA’s.” It’s in reference
to the song “My Adidas” by RUN DMC. Ron adds, “that
was the first ever hip-hop shoe song. ‘ Airforce 1’
by Nelly is a copy of this, just twenty years later. The only difference,
RUN DMC didn’t get paid.” By interweaving these facts
into the lesson, Ron is keeping most of his students captive. He’s
keeping me captive too.
With half an hour left, the class begins reading Arthur Miller’s
The Crucible. I play Mercy, a female servant (at the time,
I didn’t know Mercy was a female, so the students got a big
kick out of my reading that part). A couple of scenes in, the class
is interrupted by the school intercom, ding after ding. This lasts
on and off for about seven minutes. Because today is the Friday
before Vashon Homecoming Weekend, the administration seems to be
on super-high red alert.
TEACHERS PLEASE LOCK YOUR DOORS. ALL STUDENTS MUST BE IN
CLASS NOW. WE WILL BE DOING A HALL SWEEP. ANY STUDENTS WHO ARE FOUND
IN THE HALL WILL BE SUSPENDED. REPEAT. TEACHERS PLEASE LOCK YOUR
DOORS. ALL STUDENTS MUST BE IN CLASS NOW. WE WILL BE DOING A HALL
SWEEP. ANY STUDENTS WHO ARE FOUND IN THE HALL WILL BE SUSPENDED.
THANK YOU.
I think to myself, what happens if you need to go to the bathroom?
9:10 am
Ron’s second class
In the second class, Career Exploration, Ron is having his students
write a story about their lives. The stories are approached life-chapter
by chapter. The goal for the project is to make the kids reflect,
to feel proud of their strength and to rally around things and people
that motivate them. Often to begin class, some of the students read
excerpts aloud. The day I was there, three excerpts were read. What
I heard was moving and powerfully written. Unbelievable, but true.
The stories told were of issues that kids in high school should
not have had to experience yet, if ever. Many spoke of societal
truths that one didn’t necessarily want to hear. The first
excerpt was read by a female student whose mother had placed her
in a juvenile-detention house for two long weeks. The student described
what it was like to be all by herself in a strange place. She concluded
by stating how that experience made her more appreciative of being
at home with her mother and living the life she had. A male student
wrote about the importance of role models. Michael Jordan was his
‘famous person’ role model for more or less obvious
reasons. His mom, because of her devotion, hard work, endless encouragement
and all the other things good moms do, was his real-life role model.
He also poignantly stated that it is equally important to have people
you don’t look up to, as much as it is to have people that
you do. His dad, who left his mom and him when he was born, only
to come back twelve years later, is an example of exactly the person
he didn’t want to become. The last excerpt was read by another
male student who described his witnessing first-hand a point blank
shooting at his Uncle’s house. He talked in detail about the
loud bang of the shot, all the blood, and how he had to escape the
house.
The grammar might not have been perfect but the messages were clear.
The stories were harrowing, eloquent and powerful. They were straight
from the heart and the complete, honest truth. The kids didn’t
add unnecessary sentences to embellish or glorify; they didn’t
use fancy words to mislead or impress. Sitting in the back of the
class and listening, I couldn’t believe that high school kids
could have so many real, hard life stories to tell. I don’t
know what’s more grounding - the details of the stories I
heard, the fact that every kid in class had at least one or two
of these stories to tell, or that despite all of this, these students
are still in school.
For the second half of class, we read The Pact, a true
story about three African-American guys from a tough Newark neighborhood
who make a pact to become doctors and, despite all the hardships,
succeed. The class is again interrupted while reading. This time,
it is not the ding of the intercom, but instead a male student shouting
at the class from the threshold of Ron’s open class door.
Apparently, he’s trying to get the attention of one of the
female students in Ron’s class. (Later, I find out she happens
to be the mother of the interrupter’s baby). Ron politely,
yet firmly, asks the student to come back later, but when a hostile
remark is retorted in Ron’s face, he takes more proactive
steps to quell the situation. Ron uses his go to, “Don’t
be a mental slave.” The students all laugh and the intruder
is noticeably embarrassed (this is a reference to Bob Marley's Redemption
Song: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but
ourselves can free our minds.”). When the student refuses
to leave, Ron goes into the hall and closes the door behind him.
He’s in the hall for a tense five minutes. Eventually the
situation dissipates and Ron reenters. Later, Ron tells me that
instances like that don’t happen all the time, but it is also
not wholly uncommon at Vashon. “When they do happen though,
it’s like playing cards. You just have to hope you have the
right card. I can’t back down. I’m not a fighter, so
I have to use other means to maintain the kids respect.”
After the bell rings, some of the students rush to leave, some
trickle out, and some remain behind to hang with Ron. His classroom
is always open in between and after classes. Students can go on
the computer, listen to music, or just plain relax. It is this sort
of relationship that has encouraged some of Ron’s students
to stay in touch after they’re done at Vashon. For example,
two of his students went off to college last year at Tennessee State.
Ron says one of these weekends he is going to visit them. He tells
me, “I want to go down and fill their fridges up with food.
My parents did it for me, why shouldn’t they get the same?”
A couple of minutes after class ends, a school administrator enters
and asks Ron if he would be available to chaperone Saturday night’s
homecoming dance. Ron jokingly replies, “You are going to
mark it down as overtime. Right? He knows full well that there’s
no chance of that. In fact, he gets no sort of compensation at all
out of the deal. He signs up anyway.
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Ron was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana
when he was five. He might have lived in country music territory,
but Ron grew up loving hip-hop. “Hip Hop began thirty years
ago as the artistic expression of “black” communities
in New York's inner city. Hip Hop draws on elements from all of
its musical ancestors such as the African drum, slave spirituals,
blues, jazz, rock and roll. Hip Hop gives a voice to those who have
been unheard. It has developed into a worldwide forum through which
family, community, social and political grievances are aired.”
In third grade, after finishing schoolwork, Ron and his friends
would listen to the Fat Boys, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Digital Underground,
and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
At 18, Ron headed west to University of Southern California for
college. He says, “When I was younger I had visions of being
on Saturday Night Live, or in a band...I wanted to be a comedian
which was partly why I went to USC...but I never went for it...I
don't know why.” Ron stayed out west for two years of school,
during which time he and a couple of buddies started a campus organization
called Hip Hop Congress.
According to its website, “The Hip Hop Congress uses the culture
of Hip Hop to inspire young people to get involved in social action,
civic service, and cultural creativity. Hip Hop Congress is the
product of a merger of artists and students, music and community.
It is significant because it provides one of few paths for highly
creative and often disenfranchised youth where they can channel
their energy into a strong and organized force aimed at improving
their community. The goal of The Hip Hop Congress is to create a
viable forum for people to learn, express themselves, interact with
diverse ideas and cultures, and gain the tools they need to facilitate
their own goals.”
I ask Ron to explain the HHC mission in his own words. Interlocking
his hands together, like those in the Allstate ads, he says, “Congress
is something that brings people together and hip-hop is an artistic
way to express ideas and points of view.”
After his sophomore year, Ron transferred to Indiana University.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t enjoying himself or without
friends- he was president of his fraternity. Rather, he was sick
of Los Angeles and its “superficiality, lack of connection
between people, and high cost of living.” He also missed IU
basketball. Ron took Hip Hop Congress with him and started the second
chapter at Bloomington. “Knowledge of Self by Black Star is
the song that was playing nonstop in my mind and CD player in 2000
when I started HHC, and then transferred to IU. I think it encapsulates
a lot of what I believe. Also the lyrics from Kweli’s song
‘Eternalist’: ‘That's why I got love in the face
of hate’ and, ‘if one of us ain't free, then we all
to blame.’”
As he approached graduation majoring in English, with a focus on
creative writing, Ron’s future plans were still murky. It
wasn’t until he saw a poster for Teach For America that said,
“You want to change things?” that the next steps got
clearer. “Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding
recent college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years
to teach in urban and rural public schools, and become lifelong
leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity.”
Ron did some further research and the mission of TFA was similar
to that of HHC. He saw a good fit and applied to become a teacher.
Ron was accepted and taught American Literature for two years at
Vashon. He remained at Vashon after his two-year commitment was
up. One of the simpler reasons he gives for staying is “I
like hanging with the kids. Who knows if they think I’m cool,
but I just like to hang with them. I especially like to learn from
them.” On a deeper level, Ron responds, “You can say:
‘Education is important’ without having any idea of
how to get a good education. And I think that many white people
I know just think that my African American students are choosing
not to take advantage of opportunities, and sure there is some of
that, but I think what many whites don’t even realize that
African-American's perspectives are different. It doesn't make anyone
wrong or right...but our perceptions are our realities. So how can
we reconcile them with each other when our schools are oftentimes
more segregated than they were 30 years ago. I am optimistic that
things will change, because they will have to....I just wish that
more people, across a broad spectrum, would commit themselves to
working on the problem.”
Ron is still working on the problem.
8:21 pm
Ron’s house for Shabbat Dinner
I’m hanging out at the house Ron just bought. It’s
a comfortable three-bedroom bungalow on the outskirts of St. Louis.
Tunes are kicking and we’re just chatting. Ron shows me around
and we walk into a room downstairs that houses a bunch of boxes.
He reaches into a box and grabs a CD. He gives it to me. It’s
his own CD entitled Lyrical
Buffet. He produced it himself. It’s a genre he’s
dubbed Fun-Hop. “Basically the genre I attempted
to create is where live music, rhymes, and fun/comedy were combined.
I got a lot of shit from my ‘hip hop’ friends for my
second album not being ‘real’ hip-hop. So my response
was not to change, but to embrace the difference and call it FUNHOP
on the third album.”
Soon, the food comes off the grill and we head to the table. We
sit down and break the bread for Shabbat. After saying Friday night
prayers, Ron offers, “I was mad at GOD for awhile, so I didn’t
used to do this. But now I do.” Dinner consists of home cooked
salad, corn, kosher steak and some local brew. After a couple of
bites, Ron exclaims, “this kosher steak is gangsta.”
From the satisfied grin on his face I understand the vernacular.
We finish dinner and drive to Hip Hop night at the Duck Room of
Blueberry Hill. I pop in Lyrical Buffet on the way.
12:24 am
Duck Room at Blueberry Hill
Every Friday night, the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill is filled with
people of all ethnicities primed to listen to some local hip-hop.
Ron states, ‘Being at a hip hop performance is one of the
few places where I go that I see people of all colors putting their
hands in the air and enjoying the same thing.” At the Duck
Room, Ron isn’t a public celebrity or a well-known hip-hop
commodity, but he easily could be. He doesn’t market himself
that way. Trying to speak over the loud music that the DJ is pumping
out, I ask people if they know about Hip Hop Congress and the common
response is: “Hell yeah!” I point over to the corner
of the stage where Ron is sitting and say, “Well over there
is a founder. Go up and talk to him if you want.” “Could
I?” they ask. Sure can.
After spending some time chatting with them, Ron is now bringing
two of these newly met acquaintances into his class to speak. Ron
has even brought Hip Hop Congress to Vashon. One of his students,
Gerrod, aka Young Hoodlum, has had Ron as a teacher since he was
a freshman. This year, Gerrod is president of the Vashon chapter
of Hip Hop Congress. According to Gerrod, “Ron made it way
easier for me freshman year. I came thinking it would be real hard
and he made it easy. He gave me confidence. I was rapping in class
and he told me ‘Come to Hip Hop Congress’ He gave me
the confidence to step up and start rapping. I have been ever since.”
Of course it makes sense that Ron is connecting the two worlds of
school and hip-hop. That’s what he does; he builds bridges.
Rather than point out the differences apparent in life, Ron embraces
the similarities. The bridges between hip-hop, English literature
and life are clear to him. “Hip-hop is pure creative expression
from your soul, a medium through which people can affect and create
something. That's what life is about - waking up every morning and
saying, 'What is my contribution? How am I going to affect the world?”
My favorite song from the Get Up and Crazy mix Ron made
for me is Track 8. It’s called ‘Back in the Day’s’
by Scavone. It has a smooth beat and I think it is relevant. It
goes something like:
“We going on a journey, a throwback journey…back in
the time when music was creativity…back in the days when the
music was pure…it don’t matter where you’re from
it matter where you’re at, and that’s a fact…but
my heart remains back in the old, like Robert Frost said, nature’s
first green is gold.”
You might not think that Robert Frost and hip-hop have much in
common, but for Ron Gubitz and the beat he embraces, both are rhythmic,
lyrical and true.
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For more information of Hip Hop Congress, kindly see www.hiphopcongress.com
For more information on Teach For America, kindly see www.teachforamerica.com
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