Photo credit: Alius

Jamila Sams is the founder of Go To Ms. Sams Inc., the only Black-owned, culturally responsive social-emotional learning (SEL) edtech company servicing school districts nationwide (approx. 140 schools across 16 states).

In 2020, Jamila’s company launched We Do it 4 the Culture™ (WDI4TC), an SEL curriculum that uses Hip Hop to help middle and high school students develop the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills vital for life success.

Jamila also sits on the executive board of DC’s Words Beats & Life, an organization whose focus is to transform individual lives and communities through Hip Hop culture in all its forms.

We caught up with Jamila to discuss why she became a teacher, how she integrated Hip Hop into her teachings, why Hip Hop is such a good learning tool, and much more.

Adam Aziz: Why did you become a teacher?

Jamila Sams: That is a loaded question. I believe nothing happens by accident. I became an educator because I was placed in certain situations early on where I realized that education would be the only thing that would remove the barriers to success.

I grew up with a dad who is from Harlem. When he was growing up, he was told he wasn’t going to be anything outside of somebody who worked with his hands. And then my dad went on to become a really successful businessman, having one of the only black-owned printing companies on the East Coast.

I also grew up in situations where I saw young people who had the opportunity to thrive, but based on the adults around them, they were not being challenged to be successful.

In addition to hearing my dad’s story, my mother’s from Bermuda and she was told at one point that she wasn’t allowed to apply for a magnet test that would get her into a better school because she was from a certain part of the island. All these different stories made me understand how important education was growing up.

AA: How did you come to integrate Hip Hop into your teachings?

JS: Hip Hop and education have always been a part of who I am. It was really hard for me to separate the two. I grew up learning from Hip Hop. And when I became an educator, I always wanted to tap into how can I best, you know, as Rakim would say, how I can best move the crowd. What are the things that our students are really into that I can bring to the space and connect the content to so they can learn better?

It was a very organic part of the way that I interacted with youth, but from a cultural aspect. I grew up listening to Hip Hop. I moved to Baltimore in 1997 and taught in Baltimore City Schools, and from a cultural standpoint, I didn’t realize that students in Baltimore weren’t listening to a lot of Hip Hop. They were listening to club music. I had to adjust what I brought into the classroom to meet their needs. As Hip Hop continued to grow, I tapped into whatever our students were listening to. Fifteen, twenty years later, when I started my own company, We Do It 4 The Culture, I wanted to anchor Hip Hop culture with content because I knew that was a way for me to tap into what it is that students want to talk about.

I brought that to our lessons, whether I was bringing in songs for them to listen to and analyze the lyrics, doing some graffiti art, you know, whatever it was. I just wanted to make sure that I was connecting with them and that they were able to share their experiences through that work.

I was really inspired by BET’s Teen Summit in the 90s. They would have 2Pac come on and talk about “Brenda’s Got A Baby.”

AA: Can you expand on SEL a bit? I’m not too familiar with it.

JS: SEL stands for Social Emotional Learning. And it’s the art of naming our emotions and managing our emotions for positive change. There are four competencies. The first one is self-awareness. The second one is self-management. How do we manage our emotions? The next one is social awareness: what’s happening around us? How do our emotions respond to society? And then the next would be relationship skills. How do we build our relationships with ourselves and with each other? And then last but not least is responsible decision making. How do we make decisions that are ethical?

Those five competencies work together to make us better human beings. But then all five of those competencies are directly connected to the stories we hear in Hip Hop culture. And so what I’ve done is to match the five elements of Hip Hop to the five social-emotional learning competencies. And because SEL is a huge part of the work that school districts are doing in order to build a positive or productive school climate and culture, I’ve built a lane for myself by combining the two. We’re the only culturally responsive Hip Hop based SEL curriculum in the nation.

AA: Reading about Master P taught me a lot about business. Why is Hip Hop such a good learning tool?

JS: It’s the stories and the culture’s ability to connect. Everybody can relate to stories from people like Master P – the desire to do for themselves. Hip Hop was birthed out of this. The desire to make something from nothing. Kool Herc and his sister were doing for themselves in the Bronx. He decided to throw that back-to-school party because he wanted to lift the energy in the community. Just like the Black Panthers, they taught us to do for ourselves.

Taking it back to Master P, what young person doesn’t want to be inspired by a Master P to do for yourself, grow your own business, and pivot when you need to. And so that’s what Hip Hop does. It illuminates those possibilities for young people and shows them that anything is possible. You can literally start from the bottom, and now you’re here. All of these mantras, affirmations, and messages that come through Hip Hop resonate with our young people and it helps them to see what’s possible. I think it’s a great conduit for success, for critical thinking, for community building.

You can take the work Master P is doing and put it into a math or financial literacy class. You can take lyrics from Kendrick Lamar and bring them into an English class. You can take the RICO class with Gunna and bring that into a civics class and have them debate.

AA: I went on the site for the Word, Beats & Life organization, one of the organizations you’re a part of, and saw the 2040 vision laid out as follows:

“We believe that by 2040, Hip-Hop will have evolved again from an aspirational culture and set of values, to an outcome-driven, design-centered cultural practice that lives in communities across the globe and ensures justice and equality for all who encounter it.”

The vision seems very far from where Hip Hop is today. Talk to me about that vision.

JS: The music is just one part of the culture. When we’re talking about Hip Hop and how it will drive change by 2040, we need to look at all elements of the culture. Whether it’s art education or making sure that we’re advancing education through the arts, especially in a political time where arts are being removed from schools,

That is part of our work using our voice.  Hip Hop is grounded in elevating our voices. So, we use our voices to speak up against losing funding for our schools for the arts. When we think about the entrepreneurial aspect of Hip Hop and making something out of nothing, how do we build businesses and help our young people see what’s possible when they take their gifts and monetize them?

The goal for Words, Beats, and Life in 2040 is to lift up all the elements of Hip Hop for positive change, and I think policy is a huge part of that. Using our voice and organizing to make those changes, whether speaking out on the Hill or starting grassroots campaigns, all of those things are really rooted in the culture.

AA: You mentioned that it’s more than the music. How do we get the youth to care about the other elements of Hip Hop culture?

JS: They only see the finished product. In our curriculum, we’ll highlight young DJs doing the work and how they’re sampling and finding music. I think what’s missing in a lot of our young people is just that innate curiosity. What they see on social media typically is the finished product. How do we build curiosity to get them to see that this is how they got there? Attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter, not just with young people but with adults. That curiosity and that critical thinking piece is so important. That’s where exposure comes in. So, we’ll bring content to the curriculum to show what’s behind the curtain. Like how did this person become successful?

AA: Who are some of the artists you look to for your teachings?

JS: Joey Badass is one. It’s connected to his work to lift up and show the joys and pains within marginalized communities. Joey has a mentoring program where he reaches out to young black men in need of support with mental health issues. We look at the whole person. Rapsody is another artist. We look for artists who are very vulnerable in their content.

Follow Jamila Sams on Instagram.

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