Brian Lozenski, Ph.D. Candidate
Brian Lozenski doesn’t just walk the talk, he raps it.
Lozenski, a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, is researching how hip hop can be used to motivate students. And when he isn’t studying, volunteering for community-based organizations like Campus Camp Wellstone, or playing the role of husband and father, Lozenski MCs the politically progressive rap band Junkyard Empire.
These combined interests drew Lozenski to the culture and teaching program in CEHD, where he was especially attracted to the program’s emphasis on tapping student knowledge and experience of culture to boost academic achievement and promote social justice.
This model matched his own experience as founder of a leadership program for African American boys at Highland Park Junior High in St. Paul, where he taught secondary math. The program was designed to provide a safe environment where the boys could talk openly without feeling pressured to emulate hyper masculine media images.
“I would use songs to launch a topic,” he says. “It was a great way to engage the boys because they all had a strong connection to the music.”
Next year Lozenski plans to team with culture and teaching assistant professor Bic Ngo to study how hip hop has become a mechanism for youth—and particularly U.S. immigrants—to gain a voice and to influence their communities.
Lozenski’s goal is “to find ways for schools to adapt education to the cultures that the kids bring to school,” he says. “Often we look at students as ahistorical, ignorant, and not possessing any useful classroom knowledge. I'm trying to reverse that mentality by developing curriculum around the skills that the students bring to class from their homes and communities.”
Once this is achieved, Lozenski says, a primary focus of schools can be to empower students to change their communities in an organic way. He anticipates that empowerment will motivate the students, and that will lead to increased skills and academic achievement.
After he graduates, he hopes to continue his research at the University, work with pre-service teachers, perhaps consult with schools, and work with community-based organizations. He says faculty such as Ngo and Tim Lensmire in curriculum and instruction, as well as others from African American studies and political science, inspire him with their passion for improving society and their work in the community, beyond the ivory tower.
“I believe that education can be in the forefront of a global movement to improve lives,” he says. “Right now fewer than 50 percent of male African American students graduate from high school in Minnesota. Clearly, things need to change.”
Story by Brigitt Martin | Photo by Justin Evidon | May 2010
