Cy-Fair ISD English teacher spits hot bars in 'So Gone' challenge

Teacher uses hip-hop to reach students

HOUSTON – A Cypress-Fairbanks High Independent School District English teacher who has been in the game for 10 years is showing she has more than just language skills—her rap skills are on fleek, too!

When April Young saw the #SoGoneChallenge trending on Twitter in the weeks leading up to the new school year, she decided to apply it to her classroom, a Cy-Fair ISD news release said.

“I think teaching is about 30 percent content knowledge and more like 70 percent theatrics,” she said in the release. “You have to be able to engage your students. If they can connect, the more engaged and obviously more successful they will be.”

The creative educator laid some hot bars over the 2003 “So Gone” beat made popular by R&B artist Monica, then recorded a minute-long video using her smartphone and some video editing software, according to the release.

Young showed the self-produced video in each of her classes and tweeted it out to get students hype about back-to-school season.

“I started each class by going over standard procedures and expectations for class. Normal stuff,” Young said. “That’s when I projected the video. They weren’t expecting it at all. Some of them were saying, ‘Oh, Ms. Young, you have bars!’ Ultimately, they loved it. They started tweeting it out and have been very complimentary.”

Young said in the release that the video’s message served more than one purpose.

“My message was that obviously I’m a teacher, I’m not a professional rapper, but if I’m willing to step out of my comfort zone and do something I’m not trained to do. This is a lesson you can apply to your everyday lives,” she said.

Although she isn’t musically trained, Young said her love for “all kinds of music” helped inspire the performance, as well as an appreciation for beats and poetry. She spent about two hours writing the lyrics and recorded the final product in about five takes, the release said.

This is not the first time Young has used new school tactics to reach her students. According to CFISD, she often tries to connect 19th and 20th century literature with millennials.

“'The Scarlet Letter' is hard to connect with, reading about a lady in Puritan times,” she said in the release, “But you can connect it to today and the real issues that are still there—being ostracized because you made a bad choice, etc. Bringing real-life situations into the classroom is what I love to do.”

In previous years, Young recorded songs and presented them to her students near the end of the school year. By showing her video on the first day of school, she hopes the connection stays strong throughout the 2016-17 school year, according to the release.

“The fact that it had a beat, and the message I was giving was presented in a different way, hands down this is going to yield great results for the rest of the year,” she said in the release.