{"id":13808,"date":"2021-05-14T08:28:02","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T14:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bridge.edu\/tefl\/blog\/?p=13808"},"modified":"2025-12-30T07:30:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:30:24","slug":"sisi-reid-training-to-teach-english-using-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridge.edu\/tefl\/blog\/sisi-reid-training-to-teach-english-using-hip-hop\/","title":{"rendered":"Sisi Reid, Training to Teach English Using Hip-Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sharing art knows no bounds for artist and Bridge student Sisi Reid as she takes creativity to a new stage: the English classroom. Fueled by her love of art and teaching, she\u2019s currently training under the Lo-Fi Language Learning’s Arts \u2018n EFL program<\/a>, which aims to help English teachers integrate hip-hop into their classes. She was happy to fill us in on how arts and ESL teaching can be brought together and how the program has amplified her skills and career goals.\u00a0(Scroll to the bottom of this article to watch the full video interview.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Hi, Sisi! Can you share a bit about yourself?<\/h2>\n

My name is Sisi Reid. I\u2019m 28 years old and I grew up in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb outside of Washington, D.C. It\u2019s very ethnically diverse, which is part of my identity as a Black woman. I grew up around a lot of different ethnicities of people, hearing a lot of different languages \u2014 there are so many different influences around me in my neighborhood and from the friends that I grew up with.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also a storyteller, a theater artist, which means a lot of things. So, I’m an actor, a dancer, a singer, a rapper, a playwright, and also an arts administrator. And I love to teach. I love sharing all of the things I do creatively. I’ve taught playwriting, acting, and devising, and both teaching and creating my own art, as well as performing my own art,\u00a0are equally important to me. Right after undergrad, I discovered I need to be doing both \u2014 I need to be teaching and also creating my art at the same time.<\/p>\n

Does your art have any particular theme or focus?<\/h2>\n

Definitely. A lot of the art and stories that I make are centered around joy and healing. Typically, the stories I create are metaphors or they\u2019re connected to my own healing journey, and so I create things that are related to \u201cHow do I feel whole? How do I feel full? How do I love myself? How do I take care of myself? How do I feel joyful and embody joy?\u201d I also love nature. There are always themes of nature and connecting to nature and the earth.<\/p>\n

Especially because I’m a Black queer woman, I’m always looking at the different intersections of my identity and how Black and queer and women and femme folk can be full and take up space and be liberated. So, liberation, healing, joy, and nature are the universe that I play in, and there are endless stories that I can tell for the rest of my life just based on those few words.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to get into the English teaching field?<\/h2>\n

I did a year of AmeriCorps<\/a> working for a youth center, and we were also assisting classes in a middle school, and that made me want to get my English teaching certification. At the time, that was about 2016 or 2017, I wanted to get that certification. I was looking at different programs. I just never did and then now, years later, this opportunity lined up. I thought, \u201cThis is the time for me to do it.\u201d And it was perfect because it was about integrating the arts, and I spent all those years becoming a professional artist.<\/p>\n

For me, I love teaching. I love learning. I’m a lifelong learner, so the process of learning is very important and sacred. We get to learn about ourselves in the world and connect with people and ideas. Teaching a language that I already know wasn\u2019t a far step for me because I already love languages. I’m learning a little bit of Portuguese, I know Spanish, and so I already love the art form of the craft of language, so teaching English was an opportunity for me to share what I know about this language and to learn from my students. It’s really like I’ve been connected to this love of arts because language is an art form and it’s creative in its own right.<\/p>\n

\"Sisi<\/a>

Sisi in Florian\u00f3polis, Brazil at Santa Catarina State University (UDESC) participating in an exchange program<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

How do you think your background can help you as an English teacher?<\/h2>\n

As a theater person, I love games. We learn through games. We develop stories through games. Games are our work. That’s what I learned in university and then becoming a professional artist \u2014 that games allow us to open. They allow us to engage in different parts of ourselves that sometimes we don’t engage in throughout just regular, day-to-day life. And so, I bring a wealth of games and understanding that learning happens in the body. What the Lo-Fi program has taught me is to come back to “embodied learning” \u2014 how I can teach English and use the games, the theater techniques, and all of those things to get my students to learn how to embody this new language.<\/p>\n

Get ideas for using games in the online ESL classroom by taking Bridge’s Micro-credential courses.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

You’re currently enrolled in the Lo-Fi Learning Arts \u2018n EFL Program<\/a>. What made you want to take part in this program?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m primarily a theater artist. I\u2019m also a spoken word poet, but I’ve done that. I taught it a little, but the art form I spend the most time and energy on is theater, so here was this opportunity to get a teaching English certification. I was like, \u201cOK, great. I want to do that and then do it with hip-hop. Can I do this? I want to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea that I could stretch and be challenged as an artist was something that intrigued me because it wasn’t just what I was used to. I wanted to see if I could connect to and play within the craft of hip-hop and use it. So really, I was like, \u201cLet me challenge myself and apply,\u201d not knowing where I would end up. Let me challenge myself, and it’s already something I’ve been interested in, and it’s about incorporating the arts. Anytime I can put the arts into something, sign me up!<\/p>\n

How is the Arts \u2018n EFL Program going so far? What are you learning about incorporating hip-hop into teaching English?<\/h2>\n

We’re about to finish the program. In the past few months, we’ve been doing workshops twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, where we look at different terms that we\u2019ve been learning in the courses from Bridge, as well as at the different elements of hip-hop.<\/p>\n

What Lo-Fi’s founder, Miles, has been teaching us is his method that he calls the Irie-Miyagi method. It looks at the five elements of hip-hop and intentionally uses them to intersect with the receptive and productive skills that we learn about from Bridge. So, we’ve had several classes where we look at how we can use the five elements of hip-hop:<\/p>\n