Last Word: Jason Rawls

As a distinguished music producer and DJ, Dr. Jason Rawls, EDD ’17, has been mixing beats for 25-plus years. Today, he is mixing his passions—music and teaching—and revolutionizing teacher education.

Rawls began teaching at Ohio University Zanesville in 2019 and in 2021 joined the faculty of OHIO’s Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education, where he serves as an associate professor of instruction.

Last fall, the Patton College debuted its Brothers Rallying to Inspire and Shape Education (Brothers RISE) initiative, designed to strengthen public education by recruiting and nurturing students, particularly Black male students, into teacher education and developed in response to local trends in the field. In Ohio, Black students comprise nearly 17 percent of the student population, but less than 1 percent of their teachers are Black males. At OHIO, the Patton College had no Black males enrolled in it three years ago. This past spring, the first cohort of the Brothers RISE initiative implemented—with students in the program writing the funding proposal and helping with planning and preparation—its first Spring Break community building trip.

Rawls serves not only as a coordinator of the Brothers RISE initiative but also as the creator and coordinator of the Patton College’s Hip-Hop OHIO Patton Education (HOPE) program. Launched last fall, the HOPE program marks the first time a college of education has incorporated hip-hop based education into its curriculum.

According to Rawls, hip-hop based education brings hip-hop culture and aesthetics into a teacher’s curriculum and pedagogy as a means of building relationships with students, better engaging them in the classroom and achieving greater academic success. While the four elective courses offered through the HOPE program center on hip-hop, the larger message of the coursework is the role culturally relevant pedagogy can play in a student’s education.

“It’s about teaching students from where they are,” explains Rawls. “We use real-life scenarios, and we look at things a little differently. I ask my students to use the traditional educational theories we study but to relate it to what’s going on in today’s society. Incorporating youth culture into your teaching isn’t easy, but it’s effective because it gets their attention – and the students and teachers learn from each other.”

Rawls has been building the HOPE program over the course of his professional life—even if he didn’t realize it at the time.

He started dabbling in music production in the late ’80s and caught his big break in the music industry in 1998 with Black Star, a hip-hop duo composed of Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) and Talib Kweli. Over the past 25 years, Rawls—known as J. Rawls in the music business—has worked with artists that include the Beastie Boys, Eric Roberson and Aloe Blacc and has traveled the world as a music producer and DJ.

In 2002, Rawls started teaching—and “fell in love with it.” He spent 17 years as a K-12 teacher in Columbus City Schools, educating students on weekdays and traveling around the country on the weekends for his other love: music.

“I started thinking about how I could bring these two things together,” Rawls recalls. “It took some developing, thinking and really some soul-searching because for a while I didn’t let my students know that I was doing music. I thought it would be a distraction.”

Once Rawls decided to bring his “authentic self” into the classroom, he noticed immediately the better response he received from his students. Rawls was able to better connect with his students, to connect them with the lessons he was teaching and to foster a learning environment in which their individuality feels welcomed.

“A lot of times you go into a classroom, and they say no hats, no headphones, it’s always no,” Rawls says. “There’s a big circle with an X through everything, and what we’re doing is we’re stifling our kids’ culture when we’re telling them not to be who they are when they come inside my classroom. Instead of fighting against that or going against the culture, allow it. Allow your students to be who they are. I did that as a K-12 teacher, and it worked better for me. … We’re still teaching students the way we were in the ’60s. We’ve got to change that.”

Rawls discovered the hip-hop based education movement and connected with like-minded individuals around the world. He began developing his own hip-hop based education program and establishing himself as an expert in youth culture. In 2019, he co-authored, with John Robinson, his first book, Youth Culture Power: A #HipHopEd Guide to Building Teacher-Student Relationships and Increasing Student Engagement.

“I’ve been blessed to be able to do a lot with hip-hop and education—that’s my heart,” says Rawls who credits former Patton College Dean Dr. Renée Middleton for believing in the HOPE program and giving him the chance to implement it.

Ohio Today caught up with Rawls to talk about HOPE, his life outside the classroom and his new album.

How have you seen the incorporation of youth culture in the classroom impact student success?
It makes them feel like they’re seen. They’re present in the classroom. You can just tell the difference when you see a student who’s excited about class or who wants to come to class or who wants to learn more because you’ve allowed them.

Let’s take skateboarding, for example. I don’t skateboard. I don’t know anything about it. But what I love is, I start talking to a student and find out that they love skateboarding, and I have them teach me. When a student teaches the teacher, it changes the dynamic for them. It gives them that voice—that student voice—and they’re excited and they’re teaching me and telling me about it. Before you know it, they’re doing concepts like compare and contrast or they’re giving me analogies. They’re doing things they thought they didn’t know how to do.

What are your hopes for the future and impact of the HOPE program?
I really want this to change the face of teacher education and to spread throughout the state. The most important thing for me is the longevity of the program.

It’s the only program of its kind anywhere in the country. People have hip-hop classes, but many of them are culture studies or Black studies or something like that. That’s all well and good, but hip-hop is not a Black thing. Hip-hop is global. Hip-hop is everywhere, and that’s what I try to explain to people. It’s not a Black and Brown thing. This is a cultural phenomenon. It has changed everything.

Who or what inspires you professionally?
I’m always inspired by people who follow their passions and their dreams in any career or profession because that’s what I’m doing. I’m really living out my dream right now. First, teaching—that’s what I love doing. But to be able to teach hip-hop? It’s kind of like, oh my gosh, I get to be me all day, every day, and I get paid for it. That’s incredible.

There are some people in the hip-hop ed genre that inspire me: Dr. Chris Emdin, Dr. Emery Petchauer, Martha Diaz. There are a lot of people who are doing this work to such a high level that I want to aspire to make it to that level as well. So many people inspire me. I’m blessed—very blessed.

You’ve been producing music for 25-plus years. What are you most proud of, and what are you working on now? 
My newest album called #jazzhop dropped March 25. It’s an instrumental album—just music, no words—that I’ve been working on. I also released a single called “#brazil” before that. I have a label out of Germany called Groove Attack that I work with, so you can find my music everywhere.

I don’t know if I have any favorites. I just like to work. I like to make music. I just like to keep going and never stop. I’m proud of it all. I mean, it’s a lot of work. It’s my whole life.

What is your favorite way to spend a day off?
To be honest with you, I’m a TV-head. Right now, I’m binge-watching Power. I’ve already watched it, but I’m watching it again. I’m also waiting for Better Call Saul. History Channel, The Food That Built America, any of the documentaries about Hitler and Nazi Germany—I watch all of that. I’m a big History Channel guy. So, that’s what I do if I’m not doing music or teaching.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or given?
Wow. That’s a good one. I don’t even know if I’m an advice giver. It’s not a certain saying or anything, but people that have just told me to keep pursuing my dream and keep following your passion because I’ve been trying to do hip-hop based education for years. I have been told by many universities, “No, this would not work.” For seven or eight years, I was told no. So, that’s probably the best advice: Don’t stop.

I guess that’s a lesson for any young person. If you believe it and you think it will work, keep working at it. Don’t stop because somebody’s always going to say no. Hip-hop in a class? “No, you can’t do that; it wouldn’t work. That doesn’t even make sense.” I was told that. It’s just like when I was young, growing up, and told that hip-hop would be a fad. It’s not going to last. Fifty years later, here we are.

Which famous person in history would you want to spend the day with?
There are so many people, but I think one I would like to learn more from is J Dilla, who was one of the greatest hip-hop producers ever. I would like to sit with him and learn from him and learn how he made beats and how he did his music. His swing, his rhythm, his soul, everything. And that’s just from a music standpoint. From a teaching standpoint, I think I have role models that I enjoy, that I learn from and I’m blessed to be able to talk to them.

What song best describes you or your life story? What would be the title to the soundtrack of your life?
The title of my soundtrack would probably be Polar. That’s the name of my company that I do music and everything through. It stands for Positive Outlook Links Active Reality. It’s basically saying that when you accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, which is the motto of my life, it becomes reality. You make it happen. You say things like, in my case, “One day I will be teaching hip-hop to future teachers.” I said that to myself. I would be told no and be disappointed, but I’d keep going. I was told by a very big manager of a huge artist that everybody knows that I wasn’t a good rapper and that we didn’t have it. I’ve got records and traveled the world doing music, so that’s fine. You’re going to get negative things.

The song would be They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. I do a lot of reminiscing and pondering on the past to ensure that the future is right. I think about the past often.

Feature photo: Dr. Jason Rawls, EDD ’17, is pictured inside his music studio. His newest album, #jazzhop, was released in March. Photo by Rich-Joseph Facun, BSVC ’01