Hip Hop is GENIUS: Teaching History, Justice & Self-Expression Through Hip Hop

This immersive workshop explores Hip Hop as a dynamic cultural movement that intertwines history, social justice, and personal expression. Participants will delve into the origins of Hip Hop, its evolution as a tool for activism, and its role in amplifying marginalized voices. Through interactive activities, educators will gain practical strategies to integrate Hip Hop into their teaching, fostering a classroom environment that celebrates cultural wellness and student agency.

Breath Bars: A Transformational Hip-Hop Meditation and Writing Practice

Participants will experience a beat-based breathing practice good for both cultivating mindfulness as well as increasing breath control for speaking, emceeing, performing, etc. Participants will also create a "Breath Hook" through a writing practice consisting of the creation of a two-measure phrase/rhyme that will help them express one thing they are seeking to let go of and one thing they are seeking to take hold of at this time in their lives. This is a way for participants to MC their moment by cultivating Mindful Consciousness through Meditation/Contemplation. This is transferable to a personal meditation practice as well as classrooms and learning environments. Participants will compose a lo-fi beat and learn to record each other. Participants will feel empowered to lead students and others in their care in these practices. Participants will leave equipped with their beat and song for use in their own spaces. 

From Scratch to Spark: Igniting Student Creativity and Wonder

"The session will begin with a question. What if a math class sounded less like a lecture and more like a music studio? Imagine a space where the language of variables and functions isn't just written on a whiteboard, but is felt in the rhythm of a beat and heard in the notes of a melody. This isn't a future-forward fantasy; it's a four-hour journey and all that’s needed is a laptop, a pair of headphones, and curiosity.

We will dive right into the vibrant world of the coding platform “Scratch” created and developed at MIT. At first, it’s just a simple click and drag. Pull out a block, and suddenly, the first “thump” of a digital bass drum echoes in the headphones. Add another, a crisp snare. A rhythm begins to form, simple and steady. In these first few moments, participants are not just a teacher; they are a composer, intuitively learning the fundamentals of sequencing and loops.

Remixing Mixed Futures: How does the evolving racial landscape impact us all?

Community theater and movement can aid in understanding our need for and attachment to language; language that can sometimes produce tendencies to hide behind associations that work both for and against us. The impacts of colonization and structural racism live on through the boxes we create; the very boxes we have fought so long to get out of. We will work to pin down the specific ways we are living outside of the box, and actually navigate all of this daily within the hallways of our schools, our romantic connections, our friend circles, through art and more. In this workshop we will remain tuned into our breathing, relax our shoulders, and stretch (literally, we will be moving) into an immersive, inclusive, and expansive exploration of these topics using community theater activities. We will observe the trends in the past, play in the present, and zero in on what Remixed Mixed Futures can look like. 

When you leave this experience, you will bring with you new frameworks and tools for engaging with students, faculty, families and communities that cannot so easily situate themselves in the current racial and cultural landscape. The hope is that you will feel empowered to make space for the multitudes within and around us, and that this will translate into more informed and dynamic justice work within your personal lives, within the classroom, within our creative work and beyond. 

Feel the Frequency: Remixing AI, Movement, DJing, and Music for Human Connection

What if healing felt like a beat drop? What if learning lived in your body?

Feel the Frequency is an embodied, immersive Deep Dive that fuses AI-powered music making, hip-hop pedagogy, somatic movement, Djing, beat making, and emotional storytelling to amplify connection, creativity, and healing. Participants will step into a sonic playground where dance, beatmaking, AI-assisted lyric writing, and DJ tools come together to help us remix what it means to be human in learning spaces. Through a series of playful, vulnerable, and powerful activities, participants will: Move their bodies through guided dance and somatic prompts to access inner emotional wisdom and enhance collaborative communication skills

Use tools like Splice and textFX to produce soundscapes and poetry rooted in memory, identity, and place. Practice “ghoting” (a hip-hop technique of listening deeply to your environment) to create samples and story loops. Co-create collaborative music pieces that incorporate breath, field recordings, movement, and AI lyrics. Reflect on how these practices build emotional safety, storytelling skills, and deeper learning mindsets.

We will write, move, sing, build, and jam—tapping into our most human frequencies to leave with not only a digital artifact but a restored connection to self, community, and joy.

This is a session for educators, artists, leaders, and learners ready to feel more and express more—and to carry that energy back into classrooms and communities."

Deep Dives unfold in two parts. Session 1 represents the first half of a Deep Dive, while Session 2 occurs after lunch and allows for groups to engage in the second half of their Deep Dive. See the description above under Session 1 in this list for more information about each Deep Dive option.

Participants may only register for one as they are day-long engagements.