Field Research

The central focus of this field experience is to study the outreach program of Hip Hop Fundamentals (HHF) and the interaction of a teaching artist, Mark “Metal” Wong, with local students. Advised by Dr. Sherril Dodds, I examined the web resources (HHF website, Instagram, and YouTube), observed Metal’s Zoom class, and also interviewed him.

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Overview of the Research

Screenshot from HHF YouTube Page

Since 2010, HHF is dedicated educating students combining academic and social contents with hip hop dance. The company is based in the Philadelphia region but performed and workshopped across the United States and worked with schools, community sites, cultural/social organizations, museums, educational conferences and government agencies (HHF website).

Mark “Metal” Wong (referred to as Metal in this poster) is a co-founder and certified teaching artist of HHF. He believes in the importance of love and care for young students. Therefore, he focuses on delivering fun and liveliness to students (Interview 2021).

Research Data I : HHF Online Resources

On the official website, HHF provides mission statements, information on programs, teaching artists, and learning resources (HHF Website). The mission of HHF is “to educate, engage, and empower” students by honoring “the Black cultural roots of Hip Hop by upholding traditions and teaching diversity.” Their programs not only focus on the principles of hip hop and hip hop dance techniques, but also provide interdisciplinary programs that connect hip hop fundamentals with academic subjects such as social studies, science, and literacy. Because of the pandemic, HHF provides more virtual classes and recess programs including pre-recorded activities through YouTube (Official YouTube Channel) and communicates actively through Instagram and Facebook (@hiphopfundamentals).

Their website has a background video of teaching artists and students. The video adds liveliness to the website that immediately connects to their mission statement, “to educate, engage, and empower.” The video represents the level of engagement on teaching contents, positive learning environment, and promoting a learning community. It includes teaching artists’ performance with vigorous breakdance technique (content), students clapping from the audience with smiles (a positive environment), and performance with students and teachers (community).

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Research Data II: Interview

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Metal believes in the importance of binding: (1) binding the contents, and (2) binding students. The programs at HHF are not limited to breakdance techniques but include interdisciplinary lessons. For example, he combined breakdance with literacy (teaching long vowels and short vowels to first-grade students) and with science class (life cycle of a butterfly, cycle of solid, liquid, and gas).

On the other hand, he said, "there's ways to approach education beyond just presenting the information." He first thought that "be inclusive" is to include everybody to be dancing and have a positive experience dancing. He soon realized that "dancing and performing is terrifying for some people." His strategy was to ask those students to be in charge of different roles in the dance performance. Some students participated as a backstage manager or a music director. He bound the students in the dance performance by handing over some of the teacher's roles.

“One thing I find that they (young students) really just need grownups to care about them and be like, ‘hey we’re going to have fun now.’ And also like, there’s a group of grownups that they all look different but they all get along."

During his interview, he emphasized three main points:

1) Repetition but Make It Fun,

2) Be Prepared but Be Flexible

3) Caring and Loving

Research Data III: Class Observation

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I observed four sessions of the Monday afternoon Zoom class. There were about 13 to 15 students, ages between 5 to 7. It was a fast-paced class because the class was only 30 minutes long. Metal reviewed the work from the previous class and started the class with a warm-up. After the regular warm-up, students learned new phrases, new terms, and new techniques. Before the class ended, students played games to review the work and add some freestyle components to the activity. For example, they played a "space alien game." Metal matched each space alien's color to the types of breaking dance movements such as Top Rock, Power Move, Freeze. With the music, when Metal holds one character, students need to perform any movement that belongs to the matching category.

Due to the online class setting, students had technical difficulties connecting and finding the correct angle for the video. Some students were distracted by the chat option. The instructor had difficulties in classroom management, such as making students focus on the screen.

Moreover, Zoom class highlights the instructor's voice since students mostly remain on mute in the Zoom class. Therefore, I focused on the teacher's comments in this observation. I categorized the comments into three sections: (1) instructive comments, (2) encouraging feedback, (3) safety and classroom management.

Challenges and Reflection

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Things I learned:

•Research skills

•Planning

•Online communication skills

•Modifying the plan

•Organizing and synthesizing data

•Breakdance steps

•Metal’s positive presence and the way he communicates with students

Things that were challenging:

•Online communication

•Online class setting

•Harder to know people and sense the atmosphere

•No informal communication before or after the class

I really appreciate Hip Hop Fundamentals, Mark “Metal” Wong, and Dr.Sherril Dodds for giving me an opportunity to conduct this field experience in the difficult time.