Inspiration
Cleveland Teacher Raps & Dances With Her Students, Video Goes Viral
She’s hidden a message of togetherness in the video.
Tajuana Taylor is an English language teacher from East Academy in Collinwood, Cleveland. Her latest video where she is rapping and dancing along with her students is an attempt to spread the message of togetherness to the world.
Taylor wanted to motivate her class to read and write more which is why she started "Freestyle Fridays." For this, the children are supposed to write anything that they wish to become or pursue in the future. The results so far showed that most children were inclined towards writing poetry or raps. This encouraged the teacher to inspire them to write more and in return, she would create a rap video, which ultimately happened and their collective efforts went viral across the globe.
Thank you, WKYC Channel 3 for featuring our video on the morning news today!
Posted by East Academy on Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Taylor told a local news channel, "Some of my scholars started creating raps and poems and then I made a challenge – if they show some growth and start writing, that I would actually rap! So they challenged me, and I met their challenge."
To create the rap, she guided her students to write about their pandemic experience, major events of the year 2020 and what their feelings were towards the same. Taylor wrote a few lines herself and then asked her students to help bring in their personal touch to the rap. The real fun began with finding the right tunes for the rap and choreographing the dance moves. It’s amazing how the students and Taylor worked together for all of it and came up with an inspiring video that we can’t stop admiring!
According to her students, the rap and dance moves along with ‘Freestyle-Fridays’ helped them concentrate more on studies and even lightened the classroom environment a bit. Since schools in Ohio are starting physical classrooms after a year of distance-learning, Taylor wishes the video would keep motivating the students and showing them that they all are together in this. "Let’s get back into learning, let’s have fun, we can make it happen, we can get through this together," added Taylor.
What an entertaining way to keep the morale of kids high during the pandemic!
