ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the possibilities and challenges of spoken word as a form of culturally responsive curriculum that has the potential to resist traditional relations of authority and transform classroom experiences for teachers and students across grade levels and subject areas. It examines the curricular dynamics of student voice and expression, and presents the heart of several high school classrooms in the district that challenged the business as usual of schooling. It then focuses on data from Bronwen's classroom ethnographies, Reenah's personal reflections, and examples of student poetry. Tim is a high school English teacher in a mid-size city in the Northeast who surprised his class of seniors with the news people would be starting a spoken word and Hip-Hop unit. The structure of traditional schooling promotes the hierarchy of judgment, especially for assessment purposes.
