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ABC News CBN News AllUrbanNews.com HipHopRuckus AllUrbangossip.com SearchMyVideo.com Greenville News By Amy Clarke
CITY PEOPLE WRITER
Greenville News
 If you stroll near the fifth-grade hall of Welcome Elementary, you might hear the unmistakable rhythm of hip-hop seeping into the hallway. No doubt it's coming from Zebulun Dinkins' classroom.
It's no party; the kids are learning about the Transcontinental Railroad.
Or World War II, or math or reading or one of several other subjects that Dinkins has brought to his students through original rap music that he writes and records in his own home studio.
"You got to make it sound real," says Dinkins. "I try to pick that same style so it sounds just like you'd hear in the club or on the radio but it's really talking about something in social studies or reading or science."
Dinkins introduced rap music into his classroom last year, his first year of teaching. A music maker in college, Dinkins already had the necessary equipment to mix and record his songs.
"When I started teaching, I decided one day to dust it off and see what I could do, and I wrote a song about the Transcontinental Railroad."
The students immediately took to it, having fun learning the rap song while committing to memory all the details and dates of the historical event.
Inspired by the success of this first venture and the encouragement of his students and colleagues, Dinkins has gone on to write 22 more songs addressing a variety of South Carolina teaching standards.
"My dream is to have a song for everything that anybody would ever teach," he says. "All the standards would be aligned with a song."
One of his most well-known songs is "It's the NBA" written for the No Bullies Allowed character education program at Welcome. The program's director asked Dinkins to come up with a song for the program, and Dinkins obliged with a creation that quickly became a schoolwide hit.
Computer lab instructor Sheila Daughtry, who was one of the first to listen to Dinkins' raps, says the unique approach is an effective teaching technique.
Dinkins has created a CD of several of his songs and distributed it to students in his class, even assigning a listening lesson for homework on occasion.
He's working now toward distributing his Motivational Education music to a wider audience of schools and teachers. In collaboration with Call Me Mister, a teacher recruiting and support program for African-American men, Dinkins plans to produce a professionally recorded CD for use in classrooms all over South Carolina.
For Dinkins, the reason for his work is clear.
"I love to see a kid when they learn something new or they're just having fun and smiling but they're also learning at the same time," he says. "It gives you a sense of purpose of why you're in the classroom, what you came here to do."
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